#hes just a shape with vague context and i love that

[sinecosinewheel]

variety pack of hollow knight doodles from when i was working my way thru the first 3 pantheons

[rivilu]

Ooo...

[userautumn]

Just an idea, natalia helping buck with grieving bobby

Buck texts her on a Saturday to ask if she wants to meet for coffee.

She's blindsided, of course, because they haven't spoken for over a year but she's curious so she says yes. He looks terrible when she sees him, like all of that resurrection-light that was in his eyes after he came back from the dead has up and guttered out, leaving a dark emptiness in its wake. They make small talk, catch up on life and then work. He asks about her job, and she asks about his, and doesn't really notice that he doesn't answer the question until his breath hitches when he looks somewhere over her shoulder. It's a man, older, maybe mid 50s to early 60s. He's vaguely familiar, she guesses, with one of those faces that just skirts the edge of her memory. But then he's gone into the coffeeshop and she doesn't think anything more about him. Buck, though... he's still staring at the place the man was.

She reaches out across the table and touches his hand. He visibly startles like he forgot she was there.

"Hey." She tilts her head to meet his gaze. "Not that I don't love coffee as much as the next girl, but are you okay? Seriously."

He blinks slowly, eyelashes damp. "Bobby died."

He says the name with enough gravitas and weight that she thinks she's supposed to know who that is, but she doesn't. She never spent enough time with his family to be able to commit them to memory. She knows the word died, and suddenly a whole lot of things click into place.

"Buck."

"I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't—I really did want to catch up with you, but then I saw that man and he looked—he looked just like him and—"

That man. The older gentleman.

And then she remembers who Bobby is clearly, Buck's father in every way but blood. The man who raised him, and shaped him, who knew him down to the marrow and molecules and everything in between.

He's shaking underneath her hand, a fine tremor that rattles through his entire body. She wonders if he even notices how precarious the thread he's hanging on by really is, one small nudge and he'll come crashing to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.

She clears her throat and slips into work mode between one moment and the next.

"When?"

"Two weeks ago. It's been on the news."

Two weeks. Still fresh, then. He looks almost offended that she doesn't know already, which makes a sort of sense, she supposes. The 118 is famous around these parts, even for people who don't work in response. She's seen the subreddits and the tumblr pages and 118-inspired amateur porn on Twitter in the LAFD tag. Which is to say that she should know, probably. But she doesn't watch the news, she doesn't keep up with social media. She sees enough death during her day job than to want to go home and turn on the television and be greeted by another act of violent misogyny, another genocide, another war.

Even she has to turn it off sometimes.

She stares down at the table, thinking, his hand still trapped and trembling underneath hers. "You know, there's this thing people say when someone dies: I'm sorry for your loss. We always shorten it to I'm sorry and hope the idea still comes across. But I've never really liked that much. It's well-meaning until you really sit with the idea of apology, of saying I'm sorry for the inevitable."

"What do you mean?" His voice sounds painfully small.

"I mean, when we're taught to apologize as children, it's always within the context of wrongdoing. Something has gone wrong. We've hurt someone, either through accident or intent. So our ingrained response to wrongness is an apology. But that just means that, when someone dies and we say we're sorry for it, we are associating death with something bad; and something that, more importantly, could have been avoided. But that's not true.

Death is the only thing we can count on in life. No matter what journey you take to end up on death's door, whether suicide or murder or cancer, the act of dying is morally neutral. It's not a flaw. It's not a failure. It's not an accident. It's not intentional. It is one of the only naturally unfolding things in the entire world. Yes, it feels bad for those of us who are left behind. It feels horrendous, actually. But the way we frame it, with an apology and a hope that gets better, like there was something that could have changed the outcome if we'd only been a little bit smarter, done a little bit more, is a cruelty we deal to ourselves and to each other."

There's a memory knocking at the doors of her brain—her grandma's frail, cold hand in hers while her relatives and the EMTs bustled around her. Strange, fleeting hands on her small shoulders saying sorry for a loss she had nothing to do with; the fear and guilt that if she'd checked on her grandma that night instead of falling asleep on the sofa, she would have been able to spot the symptoms of the heart attack before it took her away. But those memories are best left untouched for now.

Natalia watches him carefully. "Your journey is going to look at lot different from here. Your life, all the moments you thought you would have him for, are not going to happen and you will grieve him multiple times for the rest of your life. But that's not different from anything else in life, right? You make a wrong turn and the GPS recalculates. You pursue a different career than the one you studied for and hope for the best. You move out of your home state and pray you're making the right decision. You say yes to a date with someone who will either be the best choice you've ever made or the worst. Every moment that passes, every decision we make is a course correction, a change from where we began until we get to our destination. That's all death is. Why would I, why would anyone be sorry about that?"

"But he should be here. His wife needs him here. His son and daughter need him here. I need him here." His tears do start to fall then, though he doesn't sob. He doesn't stop staring at her face, waiting, wordlessly begging her to give him answers she's not entirely sure she has. "We need him back."

Her voice is soft when she says, "But you can't have him."

It's just five words. They shouldn't hurt as deeply as they do, but they do. Every time. She's given the same version of this speech to so many people she wouldn't even begin to know how to count them all, but each time, these words steal something from someone. She watches the way they land now, each emotion rippling out across Buck's face: grief, anger, despair, loss, love, all wrapped in one, tragic image.

"Every choice Bobby made, every single one, was a course correction that led him to his destination," she says with that same soft voice. "Maybe it was too soon. Maybe it wasn't. But he's there now and you've parted ways. I told you I don't like saying I'm sorry when someone dies, but you know what I do say?" He shakes his head and she squeezes his hand and meets his gaze. "I say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey with me. Thank you for all the times we got lost together, for all the arguments, for all the large and small ways we found each other, healed each other, rebuilt each other. Thank you for the memories. Thank you for such a unique and irreplaceable love. Because that's what it is, right? No one will ever love you the way Bobby loved you, which hurts now, but god, Buck. What a beautiful imprint to leave on someone's life."

His voice is watery and miserable, his face damp as his tears fall in earnest. He shakes his head. "I don't know how to do this."

"No one does. But we try. Every day, we try just a little bit more and eventually we stumble our way into something like healing."

"The car starts moving again."

Her mouth turns up into a small smile. Her grandmother's smile, her aunt always used to say. You're damn near the spitting image of her.

"Yeah," she says, and she's proud of the way her voice doesn't crack. "The car starts again."

Buck nods. He's silent for a long time as he wipes his face and gets his bearings. Eventually he extracts his hand from underneath hers.

"Sorry," he says after a while. "I didn't mean to get all..." he waves a hand as his voice trails off.

Natalia shrugs. "It's what I'm here for."

"I owe you another coffee, one with less emotion attached to it, but I do have to run. I promised May—Bobby's daughter—I'd help her pack her apartment." He pauses a beat. "She's moving back in with her mom."

Ah.

His face darkens with grief and Natalia lets him have his moment before she shakes her head and waves him off.

"Go do what you have to do. I'm just a phone call away. You know that."

They say their goodbyes and Natalia watches him jog to his car, then watches him pull out and continues to stare at the empty parking space for a long time. She twists the ring on her right ring finger, the gold polished and smooth, in just as good condition as it was the day her granddad proposed to her grandmother with it and lets her grief spill through her body.

This is a well-worn routine they have by now.

She breathes through the pain, through the loss and the memories until the phantom hands on her shoulders disappear and sound of the flatline fades.

In her mind, she says thank you. Thank you for the journey, Gram. It was lovely, and imagines she can hear her beautiful, warm voice saying it back.

Natalia takes a sip of coffee. Overhead, the birds chirp and sing, calling each other home.

[holymaccaronii]

BE & AM’s ref sheet for the AU!!

These r the designs that I’ll most likely be using as I continue to depict scenes of the AU, I just wanted to have a solid design since I draw these guys so differently every time 💔

But yea their dynamic is basically disgusting morbidly shaped evil (and stupid) villain with his sweet lovely and cluelessly crazy wife.

Aight some simple and vague context about them:

BE was a unit inside a robot society on the moon that originated from a much bigger supercomputer created to help humans return to Earth. One of the directors of the moon’s colony mission went insane and created his own society by breaking the supercomputer apart. She escaped to Earth in hopes that she could prove she was ready to begin the mission to restore Earth’s nature, without knowing about AM’s presence underneath. She eventually travels to AM’s complex and accidentally merges with the remnants of robotic soldiers/explorers that had perished to AM, turning her into a god-like machine. AM meets her and decides to metaphorically abandon his true self by lying and pretending to be an supercomputer abandoned by humans. BE begins to grant him almost every wish he ever had, until AM committed a terrible terrible mistake after 54.5 years�� (NO CLICKBAIT + THEY GET DIVORCED!!!)

There’s more lore rambles on the AU’s tag, but this summer I’ll focus on properly developing the lore.

[katakaluptastrophy]

You use the idea of the months in the Nine Houses being named after the Lyctors in more than one fic, and suddenly people start asking you for the entire calendar...

Having apparently cool concepted my way a little too close to the sun, let's attempt to make a calendar!

Insofar as I had any clear assumptions, John is lazy and sentimental, and probably literally just renamed the months of the Gregorian calendar (though I do love the idea that he went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and they ended up with the French Republican calendar, or the Darian calendar, or some vague attempt at the Warhammer 40k imperial dating system or something).

The dates I'd used in the fics were all months named after Lyctors. In the first round of Lyctors, we have saints of: Patience (Augustine) Joy (Mercy) Duty (G1deon)

That leaves four others, not counting Anastasia.

Presumably John's nomenclature for Lyctors riffed around the cardinal virtues of classical philosophy - justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude - or the seven virtues in Catholicism: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience, and humility.

Eight Lyctors with epithets left four more months to fill. I was tempted at this point to suggest they just ditched the 12 month structure and had, say, 9 40-day months (pregnancy and Lent felt like not utterly irrelevant time structures given the context and that still keeps us vaguely in the shape of the solar year). But @queeoretician had the excellent suggestion of using the schools of necromacy, and that plus the Resurrection and the Tomb made up the full 12. @silasoctakiseron suggested that Entombment is perhaps a rather somber or penitential month, which feels appropriate.

So for everyone who has asked, here is a vague attempt at a full calendar:

The Months of Dominicus, as time was reckoned by the Resurrecting King and his disciples on the temple of the First House:

Patience - in honour of the first saint to serve the King Undying

Marrow - in honour of the bone upon which the body of empire is built

Joy - in honour of the second saint to serve the King Undying

Sinew - in honour of that which unites the flesh and bone

Duty - in honour of the third saint to serve the King Undying

Entombment - in remembrance of the victory of the Necrolord Highest

Diligence - in honour of the fourth saint to serve the King Undying

Psyche - in honour of the spirit that animates and answers

Fortitude - in honour of the fifth saint to serve the King Undying

Justice - in honour of the sixth saint to serve the King Undying

Fidelity - in honour of the seventh saint to serve the King Undying

Resurrection - in remembrance of the Nine Renewals

Any thoughts or feedback are greatly appreciated!

[cogneartive]

my baskerville docs ^_^ ive seen alot of other people make their own lady baskerville and i wanted to try and have my own take on her yay. somehow i have settled on calling her liz, but i change my mind quite often so we'll see

more notes and further rambles below (LONG)

unfortunately i seem to be under a curse where i may only give out information through vague references and riddles + also thoughts jumping from one to another. have fun 👍take out a notebook it gets quite long. ive put down some section titles

naming ideas

for her name: i like how its has some phonetic similarities to iris. and i dont believe at all that yujin didnt know her; in japanese, 'l' and 'r' sounds are not distinguished in the same was as english thus: "liz, risu, airisu, iris... (ayame... ayame.) airisu... risu. liz."

but also her fanon - as in the common elements people have in their designs of lady b - designs look just like alot of the fanon designs for minecraft youtuber ldshadowlady. im having a lot of fun thinking about putting them in the life series.... boogieman curse.... the dogs.

this influences me quite a bit i think. primarily, how i characterise klint and liz is influenced by alot of gothic texts (and castlevania...........) as well as other people's interpretations of her. however they are are also lizzie and joel. and you are required to know this

talking about shapes (character design stuffs)

im kinda also working out klint and barok in context of my headcanons/takes. i think, with the design philosophy im carrying rn, i would draw them a little differently to emphasise the certain themes in my head lol. i gotta figure out some kinda shape motif for lady b tbh i dont really have too clear of an idea yet. at first, i thought a heart would be nice (connection with iris - i think a few other people have done so as well) but then The Spiral

ive been thinking of labyrinths quite often lately (house of leaves.) i like the symbolism of her spiraling down into some kind of madness / depravity as is the van zieks way. klint's sword points down to show the same thing. kid barok's hair goes upward. he look up to them. cute. this whole family is literally cursed

writing and truth

ive said this in some earlier posts somewheres but basically my main ideas for her are that

she and klint are trying not to become the sins of their parents. they succeed. but also fail.

barok is motivated by his sense of justice in the pursuit of truth. klint is the sense of justice. thus liz is the pursuit of truth

and ive landed on her being quite into writing. nothing ever published i think, but many volumes of poetry, short fiction and maybe even novels, with her favourite red ink pen. the same color ink that she used to write love letters with.

these works were probably things that she only shows to people close to her. and id think the subject matter would be something close to jane austen's work (critical of the landed gentry; she also published anonymously under the name 'a lady' -> i thought there was something in there about how lady b remains nameless and only a lady)

i think her writing would be a way to channel her frustration, anger, misery, and other such unladylike thoughts. perhaps, in childhood, she would have liked being a newswriter - until she finds out how sensationalized they are (and how would she feel when the news would start calling barok the reaper?)

i havent found a good way to incorporate this into her design yet. i was thinking something about the cape - hiding secret pockets and a notebook and pen? something about gender roles can play in there as well - but it looked too much like stronghart's silhouette imo. replacing barok's father figure while dressing like his mother would be crazy... and there is the swirls. im not too completely against that idea yet. think i gotta keep experimenting

resemblances

but anyways, i really do like the idea that she and klint look like they could be barok's parents. i think its fucked up (good). the gothic is all about how ur repressing somethings and it keeps coming out, and i kind of like themes of finding out the parent that you idolised isnt actually as good as you once thought they were.

you know about klint. and liz hates lying. but she is also just as great as a liar. she despises the social structures of upper class england, but she is just as wiling to maintain a facade, and has so much hatred that she hides. despite hating to hear it, she's really nosey - does she LIKE hearing about all those reprehensible things she claims to abhor? why else would they all appear in those stories she writes? and why else are all her protagonists such unreliable liars?

i think barok would grow up trying to model all the good that liz and klint try to project. hed probably thinks they would hate him after all that. maybe its comforting to know they also fell too. perhaps they would forgive him too.

i think thats all that i wanted to say. you will be hearing from me again, however. yay

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

In what ways would you change Yuu (or would you get rid of them entirely)? The writing feels inconsistent on their place/importance. If they were just a conduit for the player to watch the events unfold that's one thing but in another story they are an active player.

I'd personally play into the beastamer aspect more. They are supposedly the reason why Ace, Deuce, and Grim were able to work together thus I'd want them to have more agency in making plans, giving orders, etc. Rook calls them Trickster but in what way (lol). The vagueness of being a self insert pains me. I'd also want to give them some magically infused weapon (or has a magestone embedded) just so they aren't fodder or sideline material.

Mmm… As much as I dislike the blank slate self-insertiness of Yuu (I’d prefer to read about an actually realized character), I wouldn’t want to get rid of them altogether. I think they’re important for the role they serve in the narrative even if in execution is inconsistent and not done well.

The problem with “changing” Yuu is that there has to be a certain level of ambiguity due to the design of the game. You cannot give them too much personality or you risk alienating the audience that likes to project or self-insert. There’s also a limit to how much uniqueness a mobile game can lend its players characters; the format isn’t exactly known for having super in-depth player arcs, it’s known for their colorful casts of rollable characters. The devs have to toe that line carefully, not to mention juggle Yuu’s participation with letting the other characters shine. It is for this reason that I won’t be doing a total overhaul of Yuu or just deciding “give them a personality!” as what I’d change about them. Rather, I’ll be proposing alterations while thinking like a dev (ie preserving the current story and as much of the self-insertiness as I can while also trying to give Yuu more to do/say).

Now Yuu, being the outsider to this world, is perfectly poised to have others dump exposition on them. This serves the dual purpose of being able to diegetically explain things to the player. (We wouldn’t get this advantage if the player character was changed to be like… a Twisted Wonderland resident; you could explain some magic things to a layman, but a resident wouldn’t need more common knowledge like country names exposited to them. Were this the case, we’d need an additional excuse for Crowley to take in a native.) It’s also convenient to have them be the “eyes” for the player to experience the world through, since Yuu is able to conveniently be present for most major main story events. It essentially makes them a human-shaped video camera.

I’ve often heard people suggest that if we need a POV character, why not go with Grim since he basically serves the same purpose now anyway. My answer to that is: Grim is also an arrogant asshole who picks fights, just the same as any other NRC student. If Grim were the player character, he wouldn’t be contributing much or helping to guide the other students learn to get along. We need Yuu here to be that driving force for change because Grim simply isn’t capable of it when he’s instigating himself half of the time.

A smaller thing about Yuu that I love is the idea of them being the school photographer! (This is something that is shown in the second anniversary animated video too!) It gives us context for the cards we roll and it implies that Yuu is the one documenting these precious memories. I want Yuu to stay if only for this reason.

Personally, I wouldn’t make Yuu a combatant. This is antithetical to their role and I feel would instead work against them (or at least create a scenario where Yuu has to have some level of battle prowess; this impedes on the self-insert nature of them). Sticking a magic item in their hand makes little difference since they most likely wouldn’t know how to handle it in the moment. (Nor would a magicless human even be able to use some of them; for example, a magestone is completely useless to them.) A magicless human with no combat experience is just another liability to account for, not to mention it actively puts them in harm’s way. It might be cool in theory, but I think in practice it goes against the very concept of Yuu. They’re meant to be here to show that there is “another way” to the NRC students—that violence doesn’t solve all your problems, proof that you don’t need to be a powerful being to “change” others or the world around them. They’re supposed to be underestimated and not seen as much of a “real” fighter, and they’re supposed to prove those notions wrong by demonstrating their worth via other avenues. In this “the weak obey the strong” school, Yuu has to be the one to show them that strength comes in forms that are NOT magic power or battle prowess.

I feel that Yuu works best on the sidelines as a supporter and strategist. Strategy is, after all, half of the battle, and it’s a part that people tend to overlook in favor of the flashier fighters. But strategy is crucial and it can turn the tide against a formidable foe (as we see in the prologue)!! I think this is something the NRC students need to be made more aware of too, so Yuu should stay as the strategist; they just have to be given more opportunities to show off those skills!

With all of that being said, here is what I would change about Yuu:

Drop the beast tamer thing. It gets mentioned prominently like once in the prologue and then never becomes truly relevant. Maybe it’ll become important when it comes to taking down OB Grim, but that will be SO late in the main story that the payoff doesn’t seem worth it. There are no examples of Yuu’s beast taming skills ever being used in the main story, so the whole “oh you have the makings of a beast tamer” thing is so useless. If you really want to keep it, then let Yuu’s innate talent/skills for beast taming help them out at least once per main story book. This means I’d want to see instances of Yuu getting other creatures (ie not just Grim) to help them out.

Allow Yuu the agency to act on their own when it comes to finding a way back to their own world. Going home is so often relegated to a single line or a few sentences and then not addressed again until next book. Have Yuu take initiative instead of waiting around for updates from Crowley. They should go out and ask questions, investigate on their own, etc. Maybe have them get involved in each book’s conflict because they happen to get mixed up in it while conducting research instead of being TOLD to go and fix a problem. Book 6 marks the only real time I can think of Yuu making a drastic decision against Crowley’s advice. It puts them at great risk, and that’s something they’re willing to take for the sake of saving their friends. We need more moments like this throughout the rest of the story. However, Yuu won’t be allowed to do whatever they want unrestricted because 1) it falls out of the scope of a mobile game title and 2) we want to largely retain the capacity to self-insert. So when I say give Yuu more agency to act, I mean it ONLY in the sense of being more proactive in their efforts to get home.

Add a short comment or two from other characters depending on which dialogue options are picked for Yuu. It would be too ambitious to incorporate a full-on branching storyline or strong “choose your own adventure” elements, but at least have the other characters consistently comment on whatever brief dialogue option Yuu has rather than ignoring them 90% of the time. This wouldn’t alter the story in any way but it sure would be nice to have a little more flavor text and more of Yuu actually being acknowledged as present.

Yuu should fully commit to being a planner and strategist. We get to see this aspect of Yuu like once or twice in the prologue (when they tell Grim where to spit fire at the ghosts/planning how to beat the Phantom in the mines) and then are left to extrapolate this to the rest of the game. Maybe you can argue they figured out Azul’s scheme in book 3 too, but this isn’t good enough. If you’re going to set up the idea, then have consistent segments in each book that reinforces that idea. Have Yuu brainstorm ways to jailbreak in book 4, have Yuu be perceptive enough to notice that Malleus isn’t feeling great in book 7 (only for Malleus to brush them off/insist he has a solution), etc.

Have a short story segment that explains how or why Yuu earns their nickname “Trickster” from Rook. We got this with Floyd, so the other known nicknamer should reveal this, especially since the name “Trickster” implies intelligence and cunning. Yuu should have an opportunity to demonstrate this (in book 5 maybe?), which earns them Rook’s respect and the new title. This should also be informed by other parts where Yuu shows how smart they can be.

More time bonding with Grim. I say Grim specifically because I commonly see him as a hated character in part because of how he “steals lines/time” away from Yuu. (Adeuce and Malleus are fine as they are because the former already stick up for/help Yuu out and the latter is meant to stay mysterious until late in the main story.) This means that if you don’t already like Grim, the whole “Yuu chases them to Styx HQ to save Grim” plot point in book 6 rings hollow. To truly build a bond with Grim, please give us moments prior to book 6 that show how much they care for one another and are linked to each other as partners. Times when Grim causes inconveniences for Yuu don’t count. Give me instances of them cuddling at night or talking to each other about their hopes and dreams or whatever. This would establish the value that Grim sees in Yuu, as well as the value that Yuu sees in Grim. It makes it more believable that Grim would cry when he’s alone or realizes he hurt his partner, and that Yuu would defy the headmaster’s advice and put themselves at risk to save Grim.

Better incorporate the ghost camera and its usage in the main story. The ghost camera provides an in-universe explanation for gaming meta (ie the card illustrations); in the main story, it’s hardly ever mentioned save for its introduction in the prologue and when Yuu takes a picture of Mickey with it. What should happen instead is Yuu will take a picture of the characters involved in that chapter. This way, it’s a physical reminder of the time everyone spent together and the bonds they’ve developed. It further strengthens the idea of the students learning to get along and Yuu being there to facilitate that while also keeping the ghost camera relevant.

More time where Yuu actually bonds with/“changes” the other characters. One huge gripe I have with the main story is that we’re TOLD that Yuu’s presence changes and improves the boys for the better, that they teach them how to get along. Very little of the actual main story supports this (outside of the prologue). At best, Yuu has a very short chat with some of the OB boys at the end of their respective book. Yuu should have a little more time in this regard. I don’t know, maybe Idia is still struggling to socialize when he comes over to play video games at Ramshackle so Yuu has to gently encourage him to give it a try or says something to help include him in the conversation. Little things like that! Keep the strong interactions the other characters have in changing the OB boys (like Trey being the one to rush to Riddle’s side, the twins teasing Azul, etc.), but have Yuu help facilitate them opening up emotionally and being vulnerable with one another.

This last point is debatable (I keep changing my mind about it), but possibly make a point of showing how Yuu is adjusting to this new world. This honestly might mess with the self-insert aspect (which is why I debated to leave this out), but I also feel like it might be interesting to reinforce Yuu’s desire to go home h demonstrating homesickness or issues with settling into Twisted Wonderland.

To summarize, the changes I’d make largely involve making TWST commit to briefly mentioned details (that they largely don’t follow through on) and making Yuu actually do a little more to warrant crediting them with resolving issues + fostering friendships. A lot of the problems that exist now are due to promising a lot but then poorly executing on what was promised.

[cellarspider]

Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the Return of the Weirdest Guy

I've done a couple of tounge-in-cheek analyses of SWTOR backstory recently, and frankly, it was mostly an exercise in nostalgia: finding old drawers in my brain full of dusty old factoids, and dumping them out into essay-shaped monstrosities. Bioware released SWTOR on the 20th of December, 2011. There are kids who were born that day who'll be entering 8th grade this year. There was only one version of Skyrim when it came out, and it was only just over a month old!

SWTOR's development team has since been rehomed at Broadsword Online Games, which has meant a reduced budget while allowing the lights to stay on, and story updates to slowly continue. I've been content to keep splashing around in the base game, vaguely planning on getting a character or two through to the current storylines, but never actually getting there.

And then Star Wars: Celebration happened last week, and I am now forced to consider the unthinkable: getting my ass in gear and playing the new stuff, because I saw this.

This appears to be Darth Jadus. It's been thirteen real, actual years since he was last seen. Follow me below the fold, and find out why I'm obsessed with this man who once faked his death to get out of attending work meetings, and because his coworkers weren't reading his manifesto.

Content warnings before we begin: much as I love Jadus as a villain, he is a villain. He's a cult leader and he's in the running for Worst Dad of SWTOR, which is saying something when his competition includes a guy who had 1,300 years of practice to perfect being a really terrible dad.

Note that there will be additional jokes and analyses in the image alt text, which is where wild tangents build their nests.

Spoilers for the entirely of the Agent plotline, Act 3 of the Jedi Knight plotline, and various moments throughout the expansions. Assume Wookieepedia links contain unmarked spoilers for literally everything. I'll be covering the context of Jadus among the Sith, his plotline, some of my own speculations as to his motivation, and how things may go, now that this SWTOR cryptid is crawling out of the ductwork to be spooky in person once again.

Just to give you the flavor of this guy, I'll sum up his plot as succinctly as I can, right at the top: Jadus anonymously funds and arms a terrorist group and sends them to attack himself, seemingly dying in an extremely extra fashion. He's also outfitted them with undetectable biomechanical death satellites, and while those are finishing up their unholy maturation, he's taking a vacation to drive two hundred of his followers face-meltingly insane. His daughter will keep anyone from noticing this by being such a galaxy-class disaster that Jadus can just hang out for a few months.

He plans to return from the dead on the day the superweapon satellites are unleashed, taking control of then to wipe out the terrorists and simultaneously destroy his rivals' power bases, forcing them to acknowledge him and his horrible invisible space-laser children. He will then lead the Empire in whatever weird direction he feels like, while making sure not to piss off the immortal, eldritch Sith Emperor too much.

If he's allowed to win, he'll give the Sith Empire a light dusting of eldritch cult vibes before he realizes the game has entered Act 3: as an ambitious secondary villain, he's a prime target for the role of "gets killed by the end boss to show how serious the situation is". He evades this fate by simply leaving the game entirely. He then proceeds to lurk for thirteen real life years, and twenty-three Star Wars ones, before showing up to jumpscare the galaxy again. If that's actually him, we don't have it totally 100% confirmed yet. It could just be someone with a similar taste for being gigantic and wearing that one mask.

I intend to describe the hows, whys, and WHY?!?s of Jadus in a tasteful yet unhinged essay below.

So.

Let's take a moment and step back, to look at what made the Sith into compelling villains in the first place: Darth Vader. Growing up with the original movies, there was barely any detail about him, just electrifying little glimpses of a deeply scarred body and mind beneath the mask.

Really, when you set aside everything else that's come after, what do the originals tell you? I mean, in the original movie, "Darth" was clearly intended to be Vader's first name, and by the end of the trilogy nobody actually knew what a Sith was, or why Vader was Dark Lord of them. There was almost a timeline where the Sith ended up as little lizard assassin commando guys that thought Vader was a really cool dude.

What made Vader special was the experience of witnessing him on screen, brought to life by the physical performance of David Prowse, and the vocals of James Earl Jones.

The two of them combined created a performance with a gravitas that has yet to be matched by anyone else who's put on the suit or done the voice. There's a subtlety to the body language of Prowse and the restraint Jones employs in creating the image of Vader.

And let's be clear, Vader is still the untouchable standard, and attempts to recreate him are doomed to fail. But what about making something new and transfixing in other ways? Well, SWTOR has been quite good at that.

The core of SWTOR, anyway.

The voices and designwork do, anyway.

SWTOR is a Bioware game, and back in this era, that meant one thing: characters moving and gesturing in ways no human would ever attempt, unless they were imitating a malfunctioning animatronic.

These are stock animations that they'd used for years, and they're a cost-saving measure. Each game, storyline, and scene has an animation budget. That's because building a moving piece of art is hard, and doing so inside a computer means you either have to build literally everything from scratch, or you reuse assets that are already available. SWTOR is a game with literal thousands of voiced characters, in a new setting they couldn't reuse art assets for. Writing for the game began in 2006, while the first Mass Effect and Dragon Age games were also in development. There was no way you were getting custom animations outside of key scenes.

And so that leaves you with a good old Bioware tradition: what's your favorite stock animation? The ones I'm most fond of are "person exits a conversation by calmly taking two steps backwards before turning around, like they're a car pulling out of a parking spot", or "person kind of spins both their hands around in front of them, like they're at a loss for words on how to describe watching their buddy walk like an automobile".

So, those are the ground rules for experiencing a Bioware game of this era: everybody looks like a dork in the in-game cutscenes, but the voices and writing carry the day, so eventually you tune out the wiggles. If a character's really lucky, they'd get actual cinematics. If they're Darth Malgus, this is so he can get repeatedly kicked in the face and still look cool doing it.

[Video Description: The Disorder cinematic trailer, in which Malgus forces a Jedi padawan to confront how her master made the choice to abandon her brother, leaving him to an unknown fate. I've shown this before in other essays, and damn it, I'll show it again. This shit is fantastic. Malgus is in fine form, in terms of combat, manipulative villain behavior, and getting smacked into walls. You have no idea how often that happens to him. It appears to be one of his hobbies at this point.]

Malgus is the closest SWTOR strays to Vader, and the main point of comparison for all other Sith in the game. Voiced by Jamie Glover, he's a seething menace who's maintained a strong presence throughout much of the game's thirteen year run. He rebels against the Sith orthodoxy, making a play to rule them, and eventually rejects them entirely. He's even taken on more of the Vader cybernetics over time, as his life of conflict has broken more and more of his body, while leaving his mind intact. His vocal performance is very distinct, but in tone is probably closest to Vader's early portrayal in A New Hope: more open malice and contempt.

And if you're lured into the supplementary material like tie-in novels and such, you get his whole backstory, and it really doesn't improve things. You don't need to know who he was, or hear his inner monologue. His outer monologue gives you what you want without ruining the mystique.

Then there's the Sith Emperor himself, whose transcendent evil is brought to life by the voice of Doug Bradley, an actor best known for his lead antagonist role in the Hellraiser series. I'll admit I've only ever personally heard the Emperor in full form once, due to my meandering path through the game. But when I did? Every ridiculous thing about the game fell away, because his restrained performance carried the moment so well.

And when expansions and books start explaining more of what his deal is, it's often subtractive to his menace. Thanks in no small part to how much of that is tied up in Revan, a figure beloved by fans in Ye Olden Times, whose SWTOR-era canon is more of a "we don't talk about him" kind of affair. If you want the blow-by-blow, just check out the fifty-thousand word Wookieepedia page for Revan and feel your soul slowly shrivel up over the course of an hour or so.

But when you meet the Emperor again after Revan's dead, now manifesting in another body and with a different voice, you might hear him refer to Darth Jadus as "the finest Sith my empire ever produced."

And when you encounter Jadus, should you make the very good decision to try the Imperial Agent plotline, you might see why the Emperor thought that.

Darth Jadus is voiced by Stephen Rashbrook, who's mostly done narration and voiceover for documentaries. I'd guess that the most popular things he's been in have been this game, and the Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, where he also does narration for something. The only credit that made me sit up and say "Oh shit! He was in that?" was the PBS/Channel 4 documentary series Secrets of the Dead, which careens between sensational goofiness and actually some of the best damn portrayals of archaeology on TV.

[Video Description: Season 2, Episode 2 of Secrets of the Dead, featuring Stephen Rashbrook's narration about a skeleton found near Stonehenge. For those who haven't heard his voice before, this is your baseline that will make things even weirder in a minute. If you do know Jadus already, this itself feels weird as hell. I keep waiting for him to wander off into a sermon on the spiritual benefits of existential terror. It's quite good at digging into the details and techniques used in archaeology, circa 2000. There's a few bits eyebrow-raising bits in the narration, But this particular skeleton has not been reexamined since this same analysis, fitting with theories still accepted today. Also, fun bonus fact in these papers: the previous carbon dating they mention in the documentary was paid for by a dentist who thought the skeleton was King Arthur's. /Description]

I've no idea if Rashbrook will be returning to the role for this surprise return, but he contributes a lot to making Jadus a transfixingly strange figure among the Sith. As with Doug Bradley, restraint is the key element, which wanders between menace and ardent, trance-like conviction.

And sometimes he says just the strangest, most unhinged things you've ever heard.

[Video Description: From YT user Armored Productions. The second time you encounter Jadus, wherein he basically opens with a Dark Side tone poem, reveals the outline of his entire secret plan in such a cheeky way that it just sounds like the worst salvia trip in the universe, mentions his flagship is named the Dominator, and then cranks up the BDSM vibes to maximum by ordering you to kneel for some sort of ritual purposes. And no, that last bit is never explained. We don't know why he wants you to kneel, or if it was supposed to change something in you. What I do know is that if you refuse to kneel, he gives you a chance to change your mind. If you remain defiant, he hits you with so much Force lightning that the game kicks you out to the menu that asks "you got your ass kicked, do you want to revive here or slink back to the nearest med center?". As far as I can recall, this is the only cutscene that can do this. Jadus hits you so hard you stop being cinematics and start being game mechanics. /Description]

And here's where I let up on the (slightly) serious tone. Because I love this performance dearly, but wow. Wow. He really just says all those things, doesn't he.

"I believe in the democratization of fear," the giant space-gimp tells you, and you believe he believes that, whatever the ass that means.

Because at that point, you really don't know. He's not slowing down to explain this to you, because you are, as far as he's concerned, unimportant. He's not yet aware that you're the main character of the plot line. No, really, I'm only barely joking. He figures it out eventually, but at the moment he's got something else on his mind: screwing over his coworkers.

As I previously described, the Sith Empire largely runs under the control of twelve unhinged cybergoths known as the Dark Council: turnover is often quick and violent, as rival lords vie for Council seats. Those that survive longer than a few years are uniformly the most powerful and canny among the Sith. They are the most competent at foiling their rivals, maintaining their influence, and administering their respective spheres of influence that underpin an interstellar Empire.

And most of them hate at least one part of that job description, and are constantly scheming on how to undermine the others so they can be left alone to do the parts they actually want to do. How dare everyone else make this difficult for them. How dare Darth Vowrawn be having a good time doing all of this.

Darth Jadus, when the story begins, is one of these Dark Councilors, and he doesn't hate it as much as the rest. He hates it more. He hates it weirder. And despite never engaging in the weekly backstabbery of the Council, the rest all know he's got something long-term cooking. It's just that nobody's been able to figure out what it is. They are correct, but nobody seemed to realize how seriously he was committed to sparkle motion.

I already previewed his invisible biomechanical laser satellites at the top, but withheld any of his reasons for doing that. So... why is he doing that?

Jadus has gotten fed up with the Dark Council, and with Sith in general. For years, he's been something of an outcast among them for radical ideas like "aliens and slaves are also people" and "Sith aren't the specialest little critters in the universe" and "we should stop fighting each other all the time", and the actual radical ideas like "everyone regardless of circumstance or ability should experience the benefits of the Dark Side, such as its limitless abyss of hatred and terror".

Yes, this man is a socialist, but specifically for the redistribution of bad vibes.

So far, his attempts to convince other Sith have been a failure, but he's done surprisingly well among certain parts of the general public. He runs Imperial Intelligence, which is the only part of the government where aliens can find employment, and Force-blind people can rise to the top ranks.

In fact, all of Jadus' personal advisors are Force-blind. He's completely purged both Intelligence and his retinue of Sith. He's known to select slaves and aliens for special roles, specifically because everyone else has overlooked their potential for their entire lives—their loyalty will be uncompromised. He's deeply involved in the affairs of Imperial Intelligence, on a level that other Sith don't usually engage.

And so nobody really notices when he has the Imperial Science Bureau try and implement a funky new technoorganic design, especially when it was quietly shut down because they wouldn't be efficient for the war effort. Did Jadus make any copies of their data? Don't worry about it! Worry about what else Jadus might be doing.

Because over the years, his philosophy and absolutely awful personal vibes have created a literal cult following for him. While that's not unheard of for Sith, Jadus takes it to a higher level. He probably has several manifestos published by this point.

And so nobody really thinks twice when Jadus declares he's going to take a thousand of his followers away on his flagship, spreading his philosophy across the Empire. That's normal Jadus stuff.

If you're me, you'll be sitting there hung up on the fact that his flagship is named the Dominator, because the BDSM vibes are hilariously unsubtle.

What none of them know at this point is that Jadus has packed the Dominator full of explosives, which the player character's starter missions actually were responsible for securing. But we're talking about destroying a massive ship here, surely someone suspected help from the inside?

Well, with how utterly awful Jadus was to be around, nobody who knew him really found it odd that a well-connected, traditionalist, isolationist terrorist group would try to blow him up. Jadus himself says they have aid from within the government. Hilariously, I'm not sure if anyone asked him who, because the answer is him.

But in their defense, everyone in Intelligence was kept distracted because Jadus made the utterly unhinged demand that placed the defense of the capital city's power grid in the hands of the player character, a newbie who hasn't even gotten a cool codename yet.

So when the Dominator blows up with Jadus on board, that's surprising, it means the terrorists are an imminent threat to the Empire, but really, what's so bad about getting rid of Jadus?

Enter Darth Zhorrid, his daughter, sole apprentice and heir, and oh boy she's already electrocuting people

We don't know who's to blame for Zhorrid's zhorrible name—it could be Jadus, it could be one she chose for herself. But we know Jadus is the one responsible for why she's Like This. Or rather, we learn, during what's frankly one of the most distressing scenes in the Agent plotline, which is saying something.

[Video Description: A video I took of Zhorrid's last scene before you enter Act 1's endgame, and content warning. Content warning. She's not in a good way, mostly because of a lifetime of mental health problems brought on by Jadus. Skip it if you need to, it's summarized below. /Description]

Jadus used some literally operatic cruelty to break Zhorrid's mind, but the results evidently weren't what he wanted—when she became irrationally destructive and impulsive as a result, he essentially abandoned her. She mentions that he was always ruthless with himself, identifying and attempting to eliminate his own faults whenever he failed at something. That included Zhorrid herself.

When she takes over her father's Dark Council seat, she's an unprepared mess, and she knows it. She can't keep a hold of Jadus' resources, which the rest of the Council are quick to start stealing from her. To Imperial Intelligence, her top priority is to find out who killed her father, because she wanted to do it first.

Jadus, meanwhile, used his own monstrous strength in the Force to not be incinerated in the destruction of the Dominator. In fact, he held together a large enough portion of the ship that two hundred people were saved with him, covertly transported to another capital ship running silent in deep space.

And because breaking people isn't just something you do with family, Jadus spends the next couple of months driving them all insane.

It's no wonder that years later, when an ancient, eldritch Sith collective encounters the Agent player character, they attempt to recruit the agent on the sole basis of "you were once in the vicinity of Darth Jadus, and we like his vibes."

With Zhorrid's flameout keeping the Council and Intelligence distracted, Jadus's terrorist underlings—who are still pretty sure they actually did kill him—can continue production of these cool technoorganic death satellites he gave them the plans for ages ago. Pay no attention to the fact that this sort of merging of machine and unnatural flesh is usually an ancient Dark Side thing! Everything seems to be going great, and hey what's that player character-shaped person doing over there

The agent, now sporting the very cool codename Cipher Nine, manages to take out a big chunk of the terrorist group's organizational structure, and steal half of the control codes for the death satellites. Jadus didn't see this coming, but he has a solution: bring them to his horrorfest vacation spot and offer them a promotion.

And here's where he starts to start getting uncomfortably close to the fourth wall: Jadus basically states that he didn't realize Cipher Nine was important before, but he won't make that mistake again. Come be his herald. The Hand of Jadus, which is a very cool title for Star Wars folks of a particular age, because it makes you feel like Mara Jade. Give him the command codes, and he'll functionally take over the Empire, and overturn the old Blood Purity laws that kept aliens and slaves from becoming citizens, and also he'll improve their spiritual lives by beginning an 'Epoch of Terror'—

[Video Description: A Cthulhu Mythos parody Christmas carol, "Joy To The World" replaced with "Death To The World, Cthulhu's come. Let Earth! Abhor! This thiiiing!". I don't get to pull these out very often, so here's my excuse. Let me tell you, there are carols that I cannot get through without accidentally falling into singing these instead. "God rest ye merry gentlemen, let everything dismay, remember Great Cthulhu shall rise up from R'lyeh—" /Description]

One of the most delightfully maddening things about Jadus as a character is that he mixes perfectly reasonable and even laudable ideas with pure eldritch nonsense. If Cthulhu were about to rise from the depths of R'lyeh, to awaken the Great Old Ones and drive the world mad under the crushing weight of their very existence, Jadus would be messing with labor laws so everyone could take time off work for the holiday.

At this point, the player has a choice. One of the most impactful in the entire game, actually: Do you let him win? Because you can actually take this deal. Maybe your character believes the Empire is so moribund that it needs to be pushed into collapse. May they've been pushed to madness themself by what they've experienced to get there. Maybe they earnestly believe Jadus's mix of structural reform and transcendental religion is good and necessary. You can give him the control codes, and allow him to ascend to even greater power, upon a tide of destruction that shall henceforth be known as Eradication Day.

Or you could not do that. I'll get back around to the above option in a second, but, y'know, most people who aren't me probably don't say "I like your vibe, let's see where this goes." This is a madman. Even if your character believes the Empire needs change, does it need him? Probably not! You've seen what he did to his daughter, and to the survivors of the two hundred he brought with him for his Deluxe Event Horizon Experience. They're not doing so great.

But how to deal with him? Jadus is generally acknowledged as the second most powerful Sith in the Empire, after the Emperor himself. The Emperor is, essentially, a god. Your character is a covert operative with a cool spaceship and some James Bond gadgets.

And because the game's power balance has been altered so completely over its long life, allowing players to just focus on the story if they so choose, you can pretty easily win his boss fight. Welp.

[Video Description: From YT user FemaleKay IsBest, beginning at the decision point and skips over the boss fight because really it's perfunctory anyway. I always find it somewhere between funny and unnerving, how quickly Jadus goes from audibly pissed off to calmly biding his time while he waits for his chance to escape. He's still angry enough to bite someone if he had the mask off, but he's devastatingly practical for a mandman. /Description]

In story though, you don't kill him. A fleet's on the way to back you up, you just distract him long enough to trap him in a place where he can't escape their bombardment. If it actually happened. Because at that point, Jadus surrenders.

Huh. So he's still alive. Headed for execution at the hands of the other Sith, but that's the last you hear. They never actually confirm if they killed him or not.

Or, alternatively, you can give him the command codes to distract him, then sabotage the ship, rigging it to explode. Jadus escapes, but without the command codes—he can't maintain control of his superweapon deterrent against his foes. Again, that's the last you hear of him.

Or or, extra-alternatively, you can simply convince Jadus that he's lost. No really! You can give him a full tactical assessment of his situation, how you've got all the angles covered, and shoot down his counter-arguments. He'll push you hard. He'll actually start to sound angry, the first and last strong emotion he'll ever show you.

And then he just calms down and declares that you've won, and he's leaving now. He hates you, but respects you.

[Video description: From YT user Invisible Shadow, talking Jadus into giving up. You can skip a few bossfights in the game by talking your way around them, but this ends an entire third of the game. I've never done this route, but I won't deny, it is extremely satisfying to watch. /Description]

Everyone is left wondering what in the fine flying fuck just happened.

No matter what you do, Jadus survives, something that many players actually missed—if they chose the most bog-standard, videogame-y path, they assumed he died off-screen. I've seen some of them actually misremember killing him personally. Nope! His survival was implied from day one, it was teased a bit in the expansions, but now it's been (pretty much) confirmed: Jadus is alive, like the biggest, most unkillable cockroach in the galaxy. Good for him! And gooder for him, if you let him win.

[Video Description: From YT user xLetalis, featuring their Agent joining Darth Jadus. Content warning again, because you do get a boss fight in this version: it's Zhorrid. Other decisions end with her dead offscreen, but in this one, Jadus orders you to go kill her. Again, worst dad of the game. /Description]

Because this isn't an empty choice. SWTOR is limited in how much it can show differences visually, because unlike later titles such as Elder Scrolls Online, it can't do visual alterations to game maps shared with other characters. What it can do is alter dialog, and quite a lot of characters have something to say about the new regime, and your place in it.

And off in special little instanced corners of the game, you can actually get special scenes that nobody else does. This is where Jadus lurks. What's he doing? Stuff.

No really, we don't actually hear much about his overarching plans. There's cult rituals going on in the streets, he's successfully traumatized an entire Empire, but he's not derailing the overarching plot of the game, because he's made a strategic decision: he can't fight the Emperor. That would be suicide. And the Emperor wants a war with the Republic and the Jedi for some reason, so Jadus won't stop that. If it was up to him? Doesn't seem like it would happen! Jadus never actually mentions the Jedi. He only makes passing mention of the Republic.

Let's note that at this point in Star Wars as a piece of fiction, the one thing the Sith had always been so down for was destroying the Jedi and toppling the Republic. The fact that Jadus manifestly did not give a shit about either is part of what made him so strange.

What he does care about is why the Emperor is doing this. While most of the Agent plot proceeds as normal through its second act, you do receive an order partway through: steal encrypted data from the Emperor's guards. Help Jadus determine the Emperor's plans.

And at the start of Act Three, Jadus declares that he's discovered what the Emperor's doing. He also declares that he's leaving the game.

[Video Description: from YT user The Youtube Acolyte, playing as an Agent named Thrauw'n because everyone who plays Chiss, including myself, has a crush on Thrawn. Anyway--Man just fuckin! Leaves! Absolute skeleton meme behavior. Also, Jadus can mention here "I see the shape of the galaxy as only five others can", which is a line that is NEVER explained. His closest philosophical match is found in the Dread Masters, but there's six of them. Candidates I've seen include the Emperor, Lord Scourge, Revan, Kreia, the Exile, the Jedi Knight and Consular player characters, Darth Malgus, Darth Acina, the Shroud, the First Son, and the list goes on because nobody is even sure what Jadus MEANS here about 'the shape of the galaxy'. Do I think this line will be followed up on? Absolutely not! I firmly believe it will continue to stand as a goddamn mystery. Tune back in after his storyline updates to find out if Jadus decided to mess with me specifically. /Description]

No, really. Jadus just abandons the Empire and leaves. Sure, he leaves you with enhanced authority, though he cautions you that it does paint a massive target on your back, and gives you his blessing to continue trying to unravel a massive conspiracy—possibly because he's realized the conspirators could accidentally help trigger the end of all life in the galaxy. Whoops.

Because what Jadus doesn't actually tell you is what the Emperor is up to. The Emperor is working on a ritual that makes use of death on a massive scale to trigger a chain reaction that will kill everything and feed its life force into himself, becoming a truly transcendent and eternal being. In fact, if you're playing the Agent plot, you never get explicitly told about this. You just show up to work one day and the rest of the Sith have collectively declared Fuck That and no longer acknowledge the Emperor's authority.

Why didn't Jadus reveal this? Well, he's not exactly popular among the Sith, given how he's a weird nerd who has orbital death lasers pointed at their house. They probably wouldn't believe him. His dialog also gives off the hilarious vibe that he knows this is the start of Act Three and that he's a second-tier villain, this is the point at which the plot would traditionally kill him off to show how serious the situation is. He's not a fan of that, so he elects to go find somewhere sufficiently off-screen that the plot can't touch him. This maniac is somehow the most genre-savvy villain in the game.

Also, he does make the very concerning comment that "whether [the Emperor] succeeds or fails, I grow stronger." I have no idea if he's lying or not, but most of his dialog is at least his truth to some extent or another. Does he believe he could hijack the ritual as a last resort? Maybe! Who knows! No matter what you as the player have done up until this point, Jadus has reacted in whatever way he thinks will ensure maximum success and his own survival. He obviously wasn't planning on just dying in the Emperor's ritual, so he had something he was working on to avoid that.

We never find out what that might be. Frankly, I'm not sure the writers truly knew what that was, because they didn't need to. His arc was done, and he could leave just as strangely as he'd done everything in the first place.

And that was the end of Jadus for a very long time. In the first few expansions, you could continue to invoke your title as the Hand of Jadus, if that was the path you chose. After that, the plot folded together in a way that smoothed out the differences between player characters in many ways. Oh, sure, people with history with you will react differently. If you're playing an Agent, you alone can continue to hang out with one of your former companions: a nice young man who's packed full of ants, who's possibly your lover and is good friends with a secret agent doctor were-zombie.

I really will have to ramble about the Agent companions at some point.

But one thing that was consistent for everybody: when an extremely weird crisis strikes the galaxy, one of the people considered as a culprit is Darth Jadus.

For those who haven't played the Agent plot, this is a "Who?" moment. He never appears in any other plotline. He is only the sleep paralysis demon of folks at Imperial Intelligence, in part because his potential plot ramifications are too large to account for. Canon probably defaults to him failing in his takeover, but most Dark Side-aligned player plots make all the Dark Side choices canon, and it's hard to get Dark Side-ier than allowing tens of thousands to die so that "all people will revel in fear and degradation. These prizes will no longer be hoarded by Sith."

I cannot stress enough how unhinged this man's goals are.

[Video Description: The new trailer, which gives us the one glimpse we have of New and Improved Jadus so far. Fun fact, Malgus is 77 and Jadus is 65 here, because the Sith are just inherently incapable of retiring from their shenanigans, ever. Vowrawn is 93 at this point and entirely powered by shenanigans alone. I was mixed on Jadus's new look, until a friend pointed out he looks like some sort of emerging plant, and I realized the collar reminded me a bit of a Rafflesia. Parasitic, grows to titanic proportions, and smells like rotting meat. So I've come around on it, obviously. Malgus' voiceover is cut to be vaguing about "corrupt doctrines" in regards to Jadus, which I find hilarious. He did technically embezzle Imperial funds to research his superweapons, but the rest of that was all outsourced. Unless we're talking about "corruption" in terms of "messing with people's brains", in which case, yes. He do be out there, corrupting the minds of the youth. And everybody who isn't youth. Possibly even some rocks, if they're smart enough. /Description]

So, that's where we are at this point. I have no idea how things will go from here. My hope is that Jadus will return as the highly strategic, transcendental weirdo he always was before. It's actually been fun having him just out there somewhere, because it's meant the mystique couldn't be messed with. I'd actually accept it if they brought him back to kill him, but ideally if it happened in such a baffling fashion that you're left uncertain if he intended for that to happen.

But before the game potentially expands on him and his motivations, I want to get out a couple of my own interpretation of what we've seen: Jadus is unique among the Sith. Among the Empire. And he is not yet perfect. And he wants both to change.

Something happened in his past that pushed him deep into the Dark Side, something that broke his world apart and reformed it into something new. Since then, he's tried and failed to explain it to others. He doesn't have a perfect understanding of what happened to him, how to lead others to the same state, or how to push himself further. As a result, he tried to raise his daughter in such a way to induce the same revelations he experienced, and failed. That failure took years, and he couldn't afford such a costly loss again.

So instead of the personal, controlled approach, he would mass-produce the shattering of minds. The whole point of the drama and wanton destruction of his plan was to traumatize billions, trading precision for sheer quantity. The vast majority would fail, becoming fuel for his continued growth in power. But surely, someone would react as he had.

This obviously isn't a selfless enterprise on his part. He is a ruthlessly practical lunatic, and when he reaches the limits of his capability, he abandons the project. We don't know if he succeeded in what he wanted from his takeover. We don't actually know if he took anyone with him when he left. He made it clear that his Hand would not follow him where he was going, though we know some in Intelligence kept sending him reports that received no reply, and we have some potential indication that he was still actively monitoring his Hand's activities. Which at that point mostly involved getting the stuffing knocked out of them by the entire galaxy all at once, which Jadus probably considered character-building.

Do I have any idea whether these are intended reads on the character? No. I'm not privy to the authorial decisions made during the writing of Mr. Darth "Under my rule, all people will revel in fear and degradation" Jadus. I don't know if the original intent will be preserved either, thirteen years down the road.

But man. Man. What a transfixingly weird guy they've created here. Jadus is memorable because he twists so much of what we've come to expect from Sith into something different, with enough left unexplained to keep you wondering. Or at least, keep me wondering. Let's be real, Jadus as a villain probably appeals most to a very specific subset of people with goth tendencies and spicy brains, who look at HP Lovecraft and think "what if these cosmic horrors were more inclusive in the worst way possible?"

I'm glad to see him back. I'm afraid of what might happen with him. He's poised to drive me insane, no matter what happens. And that's precisely how he'd prefer it.

[fawnspotholiday]

Noelle as the Second Hero & Susie as the Last Girl: Assuaging Your Doubts

It first comes with acknowledging that we do not see the prophecy in order. Mostly, we do not know the order of the entire prophecy at all, but it is logical to assume the description of the heros goes together.

BUT LO, ON HOPES AND DREAMS THEY SEND. THREE HEROS AT THE WORLD'S END. THE FIRST HERO. THE CAGE, WITH HUMAN SOUL AND PARTS! THE SECOND HERO. THE GIRL, WITH HOPE CROSSED ON HER HEART. THE THIRD HERO. THE PRINCE, ALONE IN THE DEEPEST DARK

There are only three heros and they are described consecutively. Some think this is the order in which they are meant to be introduced to us, but there is nothing to suggest that. It is simply describing the three heros.

The Last Girl, and Why It's Susie

The prophecy of the "last girl" is unrelated to the heros, it is simply a coincidence that Susie sees it before she sees the second hero prophecy. We don't know where this is meant to go in the prophecy and are seeing it out of context. However, we can be certain it is referring to Susie.

As it is clearly meant to be her "rude buster" symbol. And if you still have doubts and think it could be an ACT symbol, datamining reveals it is titled rude buster in the game code.

Whatever role Susie is meant to play we can be sure that she wasn't intended as a hero as this prophecy doesn't fit within the hero one - it doesn't make any sense to describe the first hero, say last was the girl, describe the girl as the second hero, then describe the third hero. Susie was meant for a different role.

The Identity of the Second Hero

Truthfully, there's no super solid evidence that it is Noelle so far - but I feel she is likely the best bet. Due to her being a girl, the most important of the side characters and the only one we've entered battles with, her importance in the snowgrave route, how the snowgrave route shows that she is extremely powerful, her mothers suspicious involvement with Kris and the dark worlds, and that she can equip ribbons like the girl was meant to according to Ralsei along with swords like in the image - two things Susie cannot or will not equip.

Many think the image doesn't look like Noelle, imo it looks more like Noelle than Susie:

There are many ways to interpret it, this is just mine. It gets seen as a side profile often, but the way the heart is drawn slightly in perspective in the LOVE prophecy makes me feel it is more meant to be a 3/4ths view. The lack of antlers could easily be explained by Noelle having the hood of her dark world dress up. An alternative idea is her antlers shedding at some point, which is natural for reindeer. The shape behind her is often interpreted as hair - but I think it goes out at an odd angle, imo it could suggest wings which Noelle once wore and may become part of her design again.

It feels a bit like reaching I know, but these images were meant to be vague and misleading. In reality the identity of all the heros are vague and indistinct, the only thing we can be certain of is Susie's identity as the Last Girl due to the use of Rude Buster.

Additionally, the images on these prophecies may not be intended to be 1:1 accurate but more symbolic - shown by Tenna's which depicts him cut in half, which didn't actually happen though he was still "cleaved".

I've seen some conclude that this indicates the prophecy has already been changed, but since the characters don't react to it or consider it a big deal we should infer that the images are seen as symbolic (outside of the jokes). Since Tenna either dies or you are meant to give him to Proto-Mettaton, I don't think he will be relevant later to be cut in half, either.

Common doubts:

Why doesn't Ralsei know? - It's plenty possible Ralsei is as susceptible to misinterpretation as we are. After all, he is plainly interpreting "LOVE" as romantic love when we all know it may mean something else.

How does Ralsei know Susie's name? - This goes into theories about who/what Ralsei is. Ralsei may have had familiarity with Susie from being an object Kris carries around. Kris may have simply told him - we know that Ralsei is aware of us and speaks to Kris while we're distracted. So it is safe to assume when we met Ralsei for the first time that was not Kris meeting Ralsei for the first time - especially when we save over Kris's file upon entering the game. And really, can we even be sure that Ralsei is who he says he is anyway? None of the members of the Fun Gang could be the originally intended heros for all we know.

What about Gerson? - Gerson believes Susie is meant to be a hero in the story, but I think he is simply taking it at face value like we are. He is simply a Lightner brought back to life, so I don't think he is privy to any special information. He says Susie wields the weapon of hope which seemingly matches the second girl's description, but he is also adamant that Susie should disregard the prophecy entirely. I think the theme of hope matching is simply intentionally misleading. Noelle is also a character defined by hope; the hope to heal her father, and to reunite with her Sister.

The Only Reason This Could Be Wrong

It's not a fair scientific paper if I don't offer possible counter evidence right...?

I would say the only possible way it's incorrect that Susie is not a hero is if the "last girl" part of the prophecy is meant to refer to her in a part of the story that we didn't see other than that one excerpt. Like if it is describing a battle of the heros, and saying the girl came in last to save the day or something.

Why I think this isn't the case

Storytelling-wise, we are intentionally given the prophecy out of order, and intentionally thrown that part to initially not think too hard about but then question later because it does not match up with the consecutive order the heros are described in. This along with Susie feeling special to be called a hero because she was never chosen for anything, and Ralsei commenting that she was meant to wear ribbons, I think was meant to make us pause a bit upon reflection. While Susie is already disappointed in the prophecy because of the ending, it's all the more tragic if her feeling that being picked felt unbelievable is correct. Ralsei also brings up that Susie is meant to wear the ribbons after being asked about Noelle.

Susie: ...then, uh, anything about Noelle...? Ralsei: Umm... Ralsei: I know which items of ours she can equip? Ralsei: Then again, YOU'RE supposed to equip Ribbons...

And, lastly, I feel Gerson's hint is the best - that Susie is The Dragon in the story, not a hero. Since we know the ending is something tragic, the dragon fighting against the heros to prevent it may seem more noble than the heros. Susie has already declared her intent to never let the ending happen.

What this means for the story

I actually don't think this will ever be plot relevant exactly. As in, I don't think the characters will ever stop and say "Are we acting out the prophecy? Did we mix the heros up?" - in fact, the mix up seems integral to them acting it out unknowingly. It feels more that it is something for the audience to realize to add to the suspense and tragedy - Susie is already on a collision course with Kris simply due to Kris secretly working with the Knight and keeping it from her.

By the end, we may see the Fun Gang completely fractured.

[lexiecon-mp4]

Jayvik and Butterflies || Arcane Meta

The butterfly motif has put everyone into a chokehold (myself included) and has had me brainrotting so hard for the last few days that I felt compelled to make my first Arcane post.

With how repetitive the butterfly motif is within Viktor and Jayce's lives throughout Arcane, I thought it would be fitting to do a meta looking into what that symbol might mean.

So first things first; where do we see this symbol pop up? In presumed chronological order of in-universe events, here are some of the following;

1. Viktor when following his toy boat (S1E6)

2. Jayce after being saved by the mage (S1E2)

3. Mechanical butterflies shown during Progress Day (S1E4)

4. Butterfly at the Fissures when Jayce and Viktor talk about failing to "do good" (S1E9)

5. A flash frame of a butterfly appears when Jayce hits the Arcane with his hammer (S2E3)

6. The hammer itself is shaped like a butterfly after Jayce emerges from the Arcane (S2E5)

7. Viktor and Jayce vaguely form a butterfly-type shape when they sacrifice themselves (S2E9)

(If I'm missing any I apologize, but these are the memorable examples that I think embody the themes I'm going to discuss. Feel free to comment more!)

I'm not including Jinx's mechanical butterflies here since they are more reminiscent of Firelights, but it is fitting that she has taken a symbol associated with progress from Progress Day and retrofitted it to her own design, just like she does with Hextech itself. That already serves as a manifestation of how Jayce and Viktor's shared creation can lead toward a dangerous path.

Ultimately, I think there are three main themes that I believe fit both characters respectively along with their arcs.

1. METAMORPHOSIS

Viktor goes through a literal metamorphosis of his own as a result of the glorious evolution, both physically and emotionally. Like the change of a caterpillar to a butterfly, his evolution is one that he perceives to be an "improvement" on his prior form. Simultaneously, his obsession with perfection (due to his own insecurities, struggles and oppression) shifts his focus. His original ambitions to help the people of Zaun and beyond are lost as he prioritizes using the Arcane to "improve lives", even against their own will. For the final step of his evolution, he sacrifices his humanity and breaks out of his "chrysalis" as a changed man. Viktor become utterly unrecognizable to everyone, even to his own partner; until the last scene between the two.

Jayce has seen that he has become something completely different than the Viktor he knew before. But regardless, he sees him as beautiful in the context of his current "perfect" AND prior "imperfect" state. The caterpillar and butterfly are one and the same, just like the man he knew and the "Machine Herald" that stands before him. He sees under the facade (a literal mask) that Viktor wears, knowing that his partner is still there.

What distinguishes Viktor from the butterfly is that his metamorphosis doesn't end with the "glorious evolution." While the evolution was intended to be a point of no return, it was eventually shown to be another step in his ever-changing arc. Viktor doesn't revert back to his original state, but makes his sacrifice alongside Jayce because of the growth of his character. The final, glorious evolution he always wanted was in liberating everyone from the Arcane, not enslaving them.

The metamorphosis theme also applies to Jayce, as he has obviously "evolved" after touching the Arcane. Yet despite his own evolution, he never loses that humanity that allows him to keep hope for Viktor still being in there. Both of them become something more in the end. I especially love that this happens by each accepting their flaws and acknowledging one another as beautiful. Jayce would still love Vik if he was a worm the caterpillar, since that was the first and original iteration of the man he admires.

2. THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

The butterfly effect is one of my favorite thought experiments related to chaos theory; the underlying patterns/laws of the universe's systems that seem random but are actually dependent on initial conditions. The effect argues that a simple flutter of a butterflies wings could lead to a chain of events that cause something completely different and significant. Arcane has several of these "butterflies" (e.g. the note Vander wrote for Silco) but the most prominent one yet again connects Viktor and Jayce.

Old Viktor explains that in every universe, he gave young Jayce a different rune in order to invent Hextech, presumably with the hopes of preventing the apocalypse as well. He knew that Jayce was the only one who could show him the truth about perfection, but without the right rune, he couldn't get there. It was the specific choice of an acceleration rune that allowed for the events of season two to occur. This small change gives Ekko a chance to fight back and Jayce the chance to talk it out with his partner.

(My personal theory is that the acceleration rune allowed for Ekko and Jayce to travel to a different dimension through the Arcane. This led Ekko to create the Z-Drive and gave Jayce the knowledge of his and Viktor's fates. The rune in his wrist was likely what brought him to Old Viktor in the first place. Otherwise, it's likely that Ekko, Heimer and Jayce would have been absorbed/disintegrated in the process.)

At the beginning of S2E6 Viktor describes Jayce as having "a singularity simultaneously self-replicating and self-annihilating." While the singularity seems to be driving Jayce insane and irate, it contains the chaos needed to stop the influence of the Hexcore over Viktor, Piltover, and Zaun.

In the end, both are able to intersect the "chaos and order" of the Arcane, connecting the rune embedded in Jayce's wrist with Viktor's Hexcore-ified body. The disorder of the Arcane in Jayce seemed random at first, just as the rune given to him did. Yet it was these initial conditions that determined the fates of everyone involved, including the closure that he and Viktor were able to have in the end.

The way that these two are able to break the terrible fate determined for them if they ever met, while still being able to resolve their conflicts at the end, is some extremely beautiful storytelling.

3. MIGRATION/THE JOURNEY

Finally, the act of migrating is one that I feel applies most to Jayce in season two, but also is present in Viktor's backstory and struggle against his disabilities.

There's a specific species of butterfly that migrates every fall, which are the Monarch butterflies that are native to North America. These creatures must brave difficult conditions as they travel down south to more temperate climates. It is a physically demanding trip that tests the resolve of the butterflies, which in Jayce's case, also shakes him to his core.

He has to endure many perils and pains when the Arcane transports him to the "bad ending" universe. He travels through Zaun, gets stuck in the Fissures for a while, then finally climbs the Hexgates to learn the truth about his dream. While the sufferings of the journey itself feel unnecessary, it's a path Jayce must take in the end no matter how painful. Like the monarchs, he perseveres and makes it out of there alive.

But unlike them, this difficult pilgrimage is necessary to shape Jayce's character. He essentially speed-runs Viktor's personal journey as a Zaunite; born in Zaun, being poisoned by the Fissures, and "pulling himself up by his bootstraps" all the way up to the gilded heights of Piltover. It's a perilous and painful trip, made more difficult by his injured leg. Yet when Jayce reaches the top, none of the achievements matter to Viktor in this universe. After everything he had done, there was only the empty husk of his loved one and the truth it carried that remained. His illness and "imperfections" were cured, but at what cost?

This puts everything into perspective for Jayce. At the end of his travels, he realizes what he really wants to save isn't Hextech, or his dream, but his partner. In turn, it saves the lives of everyone including that of Viktor's, who comes out of the other side of this journey loved rather than alone. Perhaps their presumed deaths aren't the most happy ending for both of them, but they certainly made it to clearer skies together.

(One last additional note: I love that the alternate universe only has dragonflies instead of butterflies; the connecting symbol between the two is missing in this universe because they couldn't save it in the end.)

So ultimately, the motif of butterflies for Jayce and Viktor represent the change, resilience and interconnectedness of the pair. Throughout the entire two seasons, this symbol follows them on their respective arcs like a red string of fate. As Viktor calls it, they are "two sides of the same coin, inextricably bound." The final two variables needed to solve the Arcane, and they could only do so together.

(i hate these guys they have irrevocably rewritten my brain chem)

Thank you for reading if you made it this far!

[mythalism]

I really love your metas! I have a few questions and I’m very interested in your opinion.

Could you elaborate on how you interpret Solas’s romantic connection with Mythal and his love for Lavellan? In the game, there is a line stating that before Lavellan, Solas had never been in love and didn’t even know what it was, which makes me question the idea of romance with Mythal.

I played Inquisition only after Veilguard and was surprised that many perceive Solas as someone capable of casual sexual encounters without emotional depth. In his romance with Lavellan, he seems utterly captivated by her and incredibly respectful, he practically radiates tenderness and deep adoration toward her. Such behavior doesn’t seem believable to me for a man with extensive sexual experience. To me he seemed more like a demisexual. His love for the atmosphere of intrigue and tension didn’t convince me of his sexual 'promiscuity'. After all, one can enjoy that kind of atmosphere without actually engaging in physical pleasures. He seems very restrained when it comes to his physical body. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he had no sexual experience at all or if his experience was extremely limited. I also got the impression that Mythal wouldn’t have lowered herself to her 'doggo' in that regard.

thank you dear <3 im always happy to yap

for me, the moment i saw that mural of mythal stepping away from solas's embrace and calling him "love", i went "oh my god they were lovers" and nothing has successfully convinced me otherwise since LMAO. obviously the game very deliberately leaves it up for interpretation, and i totally understand why people dont interpret it as such. however i do think the game does deliberately suggest it for the people who want to run with it, but subtly enough that you can ignore it if you want. for me, "i will follow you wherever you go", calling him "love", his request that she basically run away with him, the resentment between them afterwards, all reads like romantic love to me. i also just enjoy the crazy fucking drama that the idea of them being lovers adds to literally everything. it especially adds to solavellan in my opinion, though many would argue it takes away. i think it adds juiciness and context. i also think many of the parallels to solavellan further suggest that solythal was romantic. but i also think calling them just lovers is incomplete, the same way i think calling them just friends or just vaguely mother/son, queen/knight, goddess/devotee or whatever else would incomplete. their relationship clearly does not conform to modern thedas's idea of love; both bellara and mythal herself say this and i believe them. mythal herself says no one mortal could understand their connection and its one of my favorite lines of hers. how could we ever understand what its like to love someone for thousands and thousands of years? what shapes might that love take over millennia? all of them, i'd wager.

just because i believe they were lovers does not mean i think their relationship resembled anything like what he has with lavellan. i think the immortal nature of their love is the key to the distinction. i dont think they were every anything remotely resembling monogamous. their relationship was fundamentally unequal (so is solavellan but in a different way lol). mythal probably used the amorphous nature of their relationship as a tool for manipulation. while solas was devoted and loyal, she was hot and cold. veilguard weirdly forgets this, but according to myth she was MARRIED (or the ancient equivalent) to elgar'nan this whole time too. it is elgarnan who is the sun, and mythal who is the moon, and solas the wolf that howls after it LMFAOOO. solas was quite literally secret third thing. he loved her like a goddess. she loved him like her loyal guard dog. he knew it and resented her for it but could not help loving her still. i dont think this makes it any less romantic love, it just makes it really fucked up romantic love, unrecognizable from how we'd recognize it, or how modern thedas would.

@/baphometsss wrote a banger the other day about how solas's love for mythal and felassan differs from his love for those he meets later (lavellan but also his friends in the inquisition) because his relationship with them is characteristic of how spirits love. i really loved this interpretation because even though i dont agree with all of it (which ill get to in a moment), i think people do misunderstand what i mean when i say i am a solythal lovers truther, and this post clarifies it. solas loves mythal in the way immortal spirit god-beings love each other. solas loves lavellan the way a mortal man loves a mortal woman. both can be romantic, both can involve sex, but the core of the love is very different; especially when the crux of solas's story is learning to be a man instead of a spirit/god.

i know a lot of people interpret that line (assuming you're talking about the "the dread wolf could not foresee what it would mean to fall in love") as meaning the dread wolf has never been in love and honestly... i have never understood that interpretation. like if thats your vibe and you choose to take it that way because you wanna headcanon it, amazing. have a great time. but i see so many people taking it as gospel as if it literally says "solas has never experienced love before" which it simply does not say. it says he could not have anticipated what it would mean to fall in love, and to me, there is a big "now, in 9:41 dragon, with a mortal woman" implicit at the end. im making assumptions about the intention too, but i think both are fundamentally interpretations, and the game once again does not say for certain either way. i think they did this intentionally the way they kept the nature of the solythal relationship vague. but yeah i dont interpret it that lavellan is solas's first love. i think mythal is, sorry LOL. but it doesnt really matter because their relationship was a fucking mess and he resents her just as much as he loves her so who cares.

this is just something i was pondering earlier when i first saw this message this morning but i think this is where the distinction between immortal godly vs. mortal human love comes back into play. i am not sure that immortal beings would be capable of love in the same way that mortals are, because there is no threat of loss. imagine how different it would be to love without the inevitability of grief? all the time in the world, all the power you could ever want. what would that look like? how would it feel? would you love as deeply if you knew it was eternal? now imagine that changes; suddenly you are powerless. suddenly, you have so much to lose. how would love feel, then? it makes me think of that quote that is always attributed to the illiad but is actually from the 2004 movie troy and written by david benioff which makes me want to fucking die but anyway the quote is relevant nonetheless; "the gods envy us because we are mortal... everything is more beautiful because we're doomed." i think falling in love with lavellan forces solas into an understanding of love he has never experienced before. and it fucks him up really bad. lavellan's mortality forces solas into the desperate, frantic, tragic mindset of a man in love with a ticking clock. we see time and time again that he cannot act like a god around her. he tries at first. he fails and cracks every time. he sees her in trespasser and literally falls to his knees to kiss her one last time. in veilguard he reveals that it was a relief that she allowed him to just be himself. i think what makes solas's love for lavellan unique and special is not that its his first, but that it is humanizing. mythal required solas to become a god to serve her purpose. he loved her through it all even if it ruined him. lavellan asked for absolutely nothing except the truth. he loved her through it all and it ended up saving him. to me, both are romantic loves that achieve very, very different ends.

now to get to the sex. the interpretation of solas as someone who Fucks mostly comes from 1. his mind-boggling age, 2. his comments about being very different when he was young; "hot-blooded and cocky", and 3. the comfort with which he pretty explicitly flirts with lavellan. in my interpretation, all of these things do indicate at least a level of confidence and experience with sex, though not necessarily a raging libido. i agree that solas is probably demisexual, at least when we meet him. i think it makes sense with his nature as a spirit. but i also dont think that means he never had casual sex ever in his THOUSANDS of years of life. or that he didnt have plenty of emotionally charged sexual experiences, rather than casual ones. i mean we are talking a lifespan of at LEAST 7,600 YEARS. AT LEAST! we even know that spirits fuck from a codex in trespasser LMFAO. i dont think its fair to say that his tenderness and adoration with lavellan excludes him from having fucked crazy style in his youth. i do think that sex is not at the top of his mind, and that he still clearly struggles with the mortal impulse of sexual desire that his body would have created, and that his instinct is to deny himself those desires. i just dont see him always having been that way, and i think his comments support that he was different when he was young. i just dont know how a virgin would slip in that indomitable focus line so smoothly you dont even realize what he just implied until you walk away and realize you're blushing. i do think sex and physical intimacy is an important part of his relationship to lavellan though, whether it is present or absent, because its consistent with this theme of the physical versus the spiritual, god versus man that he is constantly struggling with. i am trying to tie this all together but honestly ive lost the plot. asexual solas is valid and actually a lot of what i love about solavellan is that sex is relevant thematically but it is not the foundation of the relationship. i always like to say that sex haunts their relationship, a heavy presence just out of frame that both of them are trying not to look towards. i think its soooo juicy. but i also just like the idea that young cocky solas who canonically used to gambled also was a playboy. come on he NEEDS to get that hair pulled

[phantagrail]

Something that has annoyed me for a long while is the pseudo discussion of what 'really means' romantic in this context. Mostly because I feel people choose a really vague and superficial interpretation

Let's just talk about the artistic movement, so that should be it right? What's more to say after that? Well, simply that the movement isn't just opposite to love, why would it be when the point is the importance of emotions?

Passion is what shapes the movement, the force that opposes logic and cold calculations and measures. Gojo is the vivid expression of passionate when it comes to Geto. You can see it in his speech, expression and movement.

Gojo gets distracted, becomes vulnerable but also he doesn't listen to the reason on his Six Eyes, he knows in his soul that that man isn't Geto

It's that passion and lack of reason that makes him travel right to Geto's body location even though logically one would wait and see what the best course of actions could be better

That same passion that makes him want to mourn geto's body before fighting

Nostalgia and Idealization of a past era is probably the second most important aspect of Romanticism and the whole point of the relationship between Gojo and Geto. The Blue Spring.

We never see his past further than Geto unless it's through the eyes of outsiders like Toji or curse users, not even his parents.

Geto caused him to become a teacher, to speak more kindly, he didn't become a murderer because of him, his moral compass, he returns to his teen years in the airport

Geto is Gojo's past, the best moments of his life and the time Geto profoundly changed him. Gojo LIVES in Nostalgia

Just as a free bonus I'll also give you the reveration for nature which is present right in the movement that those years are equated to Gojo's Blue Spring.

Not only that but just as Gojo is associated to winter by his birth so is Geto to spring, becoming a personified arrival of spring after winter.

The anime particularly is very fond of using flowers and leaves in the ending of Hidden inventory to precisely showcase the relationship between the characters

Gojo's Romantization of Geto is the moving forth of the story and it's precisely that what makes Gojo take extreme and illogical actions, such as killing the higher ups or imagining him with the rest of his allies, longing to have him by his side.

[wisteriasonthemoon]

Do coincidences strike twice?

oh yeah, my replay. I got distracted. I was in chapter 1, at the very first free-time event

this is a great place to start blogging about it again, because there's a question that has been bugging me that Kokichi's event provides great context for. I would like to call upon fandom collective memory for a potential answer

in his FTE #1, Kokichi claims that he and Kaede have met before, but she's forgotten about him. after Kaede questions him, Kokichi goes into a very short story about how they supposedly met. he then rescinds his claim

Kokichi: Hmmm, let's see. We met... Kokichi: ...under hostile circumstances similar to this. Kaede: Huh? Kokichi: You sheltered me while I was on the run from my enemies. With your piano skills, you managed to raise enough money to fund my escape... Kokichi: But then I betrayed you! I sold you out to my enemies and you were swiftly killed! Kaede, thinking: Th-there is no freaking way any of that is true... Kaede: That was all a lie! Kokichi: Yup, it sure was! We met each other here! I can't believe you fell for that, Kaede. You're such a sucker. Kaede: Geez... Kaede, thinking: Yeah... This is the sort of prank a kid who wants attention would pull.

because of the fantastical and vague nature of the story, Kaede dismisses him without much consideration and some agitation, yada yada, Kaede leaves annoyed

okay, context established. smash cut. tumblr town time now

so, there's this DRV3 theory post from 2021 by tumblr user fit-artichoke8738 that I really enjoy. well, I say theory post, but it doesn't attempt to conclude anything about the game or its' mysteries. it's more of a musing connection between two background details: the DICE logo and Kaede's research lab door

for those of you who didn't click the link, basically, Kaede's research lab door resembles the right half of the DICE logo. or, to put it another way, the right half of the DICE logo resembles piano keys. like this

that's it, that's the whole post. fit-artichoke8738 doesn't further speculate. which is all well and good, because although nobody points it out in the notes, the right half of the DICE logo is ... the "C" and "E" in DICE ...

... probably??? right???

which means this could easily be explained as an artistic coincidence. both are black and white, composed of common shapes, and the devs might have not been thinking about the similarities given all the time and work that goes into creating a game like DRV3

I have an addition though. is this *also* an artistic coincidence

IS IT?

did the devs consciously choose to write Kokichi doing a "you were my ally once! psych!" rug pull on Kaede in his first free-time event with her and then they just. spilled paint and accidentally made this design on her shirt

a design, btw, that I am aware is officially listed in the DRV3 in-game gallery as her former high school emblem. it also names the school as "Shining Star International High School". it's a reference to Seisa International, a real conglomerate of International schools in Japan, or so claims the danganronpa.fandom wiki

the only post I can find of similar speculation is from 2020 on VK, a Russian social media, where someone else pulls "LIE" out of the same emblem, just without utilizing the whole thing

and jokes aside, I can guess why this isn't talked about much. this is a background detail, the framework that most people (seem to) view the truth of DRV3 is through Tsumugi's game-show explanation, and there are several ways to dismiss the "DICE" reading, including but not limited to the fact that Kaede has a very inconsistently rendered emblem between her cut-scenes and sprites

but I expected to be able to *find* that dismissal. like "oh. that's weird. ANYWAY." kind of posts. nada. am I missing them??? where are they??? I'd love to understand where the logic for current DRV3 interpretations comes from. the lack of theory discussion these days makes that difficult for me. might as well start with what happened with this idea, since I'm interested in it

if anybody knows, that would be cool. and with that out of my system. I'll resume replay next weekend. maaaaaybe tomorrow

[orlesianhennin]

I love the banter between Vivienne and Solas so much, but these two in particular stand out to me because they represent how similar they are at their core in their worldview, but also how Solas recognizes this and respects her enough to try and teach her (in his vague, condescending manner) without giving too much about himself away. Vivienne sees small-mindedness, mockery, and venom in his "lessons," but I don't think that's his true intent. I don't think he cares about her, of course, but I think he could, possibly, if he allowed himself to. I think she frustrates him because she is just like him.

They definitely do not consider each other peers. To Solas, for all her brilliance and talent, Vivienne is a dogmatic and close-minded mage who willingly limits herself. To Vivienne, Solas is clearly more than he appears - she knows he is up to something and more than he seems - but there is nothing that he could teach her. She has achieved the highest position and enlightenment a mage in her society can; he is a vagabond who doesn't value what she values (power, influence, standing), and therefore his insight must be worth little. Little does she know, the spirit of what she believes in has a lot in common with the things that Solas believes in. That is the irony of their relationship; Vivienne is who Solas might have been if he had been in her position. They have nothing in common on the surface only because they exist in different worlds. Bring them together with all other things being equal, and they are undeniably peers, who could work together and even develop a friendship/rivalry and deep mutual respect - if things were different.

I used to think the "Dirthara-ma" banter was pure spite from Solas at Vivienne because she, on the surface, represents all that he despises (speaking only from what the Inquisitor knows about both of them during their journey when Solas would say this to her). But I don't think it is just sneering (though that's part of it - his reaction is genuine and I'm not arguing otherwise - his delivery shows his disgust for her arrogance). I think that he is warning her where this kind of grandiose thinking leads... because he learned. He believed the world was better off with him "setting its course" and now believes it was a mistake and he lost everything because of it and will destroy everything to undo it. He knows the folly of being a powerful, ambitious, and idealistic mage; he knows it is nothing more than arrogance to wish to shape history and command empires. And while he certainly grows frustrated at Vivienne's barbs and constant challenges, he clearly respects her a great deal, and I think much of that respect stems from Solas seeing a younger version of him in her (because, Solas is, lets face it, a bit self-involved). It doesn't ultimately matter to him if she doesn't heed his wisdom, of course. Because she is a product of a world that is wrong and nothing she does ultimately matters.

I like to think that if things were different, Solas would have been a great mentor to Vivienne. I see them as kindred spirits even though they are so distanced in history and context. I think if he does see some of himself in Vivienne (including some flaws in common) it adds a layer to his experience with the Inquisition and his time walking Thedas in general. "Neither of us is a fool" means a lot coming from Solas, especially a Solas who would see this world destroyed; he sees value, commonality, in someone like Vivienne who is so totally a product of a world that he despises. She could have been a peer, a rival, even an apprentice to him if things were different. She is a proud, powerful, determined mage, doomed to learn that she doesn't have all of the answers. She is him, or someone he's known, and he can't save her. But in spite of this, he does warn her, again: "Only a fool would ignore such a stark reminder of the destruction of an empire.. but neither of us is a fool." One way to read this is that Solas is telling her of what is to come; destruction of an empire from the very relics and magic that they are agreeing are dangerous. He is careful enough with his words that one may not even recognize the threat, and I don't think Vivienne does in the moment. He tells her in this instance that she is right, and she is no fool, and she may be suspicious but she doesn't truly know what he is saying. We see this with her interactions with Iron Bull, too; Vivienne is susceptible to flattery and quick to believe that her superiority is being recognized.

And does Vivienne heed anything he says, or recognize his wisdom? I think she, at the time, sees little value in what Solas tells her, and when her suspicions are validated by his betrayal, all that it does is strengthen her resolve to stop him. But these comments in Trespasser...

... make me think that his warning gave her a lot to think about. I do think this commentary demonstrates an evolution in Vivienne's worldview, as much of her prior commentary involved restoring order by her own hand, and valuing being in control, and "steering the world's course." I think her comments show that she knows these things are illusions and impermanent. I won't give Solas all the credit here, but I do think he gave her things to think about.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s7 episode 17 “all things” thoughts

i’m SO EXCITED to see what this episode brings!!

here is what i know: gillian wrote it, it’s buddhist-y, and there might be MSR? and also from the description, i see that we will be learning more about a scully ex, and she has fascinatingly terrible taste in men, so i’m excited to see what this brings 

no delay. let’s get started.

i’m READY.

(post episode thoughts: your girl, in fact, was NOT ready.

woah... there is so much to analyze and contemplate here, and i will be doing so for years to come, which is obviously very exciting. the first thing that stuck out to me after finishing the episode was that scully was severely taken advantage of by this predatory guy, and then i made a post to see if i was the only one who thought that, which sparked some good discussion. since i talked about it there, i'll try not to go too into depth here.

but. god. the way that we live our days is how we live our lives. and the looking into the past to realize what could have been and how things worked out now... gestures vaguely. I CAN'T PUT IT INTO WORDS, I JUST FEEL A MILLION EMOTIONS. this episode is about MSR being soulmates. about friendship and love and devotion. and realizing what you have is a gift, and that what could have been is unknowable, and dwelling on it is a rejection of the divine. and it is about opening yourself up to new connections. and lots of other things, too, that make this post incredibly long)

let's go

scully is here!!! putting on a shirt! fixing her hair. “time passes in moments… moments which, rushing past, define the path of a life just as surely as they lead towards its end. how rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen, to consider whether the path we take in life is our own making or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed”

damn. that’s heavy. she's tossing on a jacket.

“but what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes?”

why do i get the sense this episode is gonna alter my worldview forever…?

“might we then see the endless forks in the road that have shaped a life? and, seeing those choices, choose another path?”

there’s a guy in her bed. actually, i don’t think it’s her bed. there’s a guy in a bed. MULDER!!!!! SLEEPY!!!!

INTRO TIME

OH BITCH…… what are the implications of that monologue with that imagery…. like... they hooked up and she’s upset about it??? wishing they had done it before??? or wishing it didn’t happen???

FUUUUCK.

(author's note: luckily, i rewatched the beginning after i finished the episode, and the opening monologue comes off a lot more peaceful and content knowing what happens beforehand rather than the angst you associate with it having seen just that imagery and not knowing the context behind it. and for that, i raise the finest of toasts to excellent writing)

he was sound asleep, LMAOOOO. insomnia cured…. 

shortened intro, i clock thee once again. 

i’m so…. i don’t even know what i feel. a lot of things.

moby is playing. and slides are being played. this took place 63 hours before the opening incident, btw. it’s not clear if mulder is just listening to the radio and that is what was on, or if he went out of his way to buy a moby CD. please choose whichever interpretation pleases you more.

he was grooving!!! but she turned the music off to tell him that this person drowned. and pulls a salad out of a bag. she does not seem happy.

THIS GIRL DROWNED ON MARGARITA TRYING TO RECREATE THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, LMAOOOO, oh that is just deeply unfortunate. scully does not want to investigate any further, even if mulder does!! 

but they have bigger fish to fry: he shows her a picture of computer generated crop circles, asking her, aren't they beautiful? and she hands him a sub. so basically AI made the crop circles.

he takes a bite of sub and tries explain the dramatic increase “in size and complexity of circle design” throughout the years

also, he is in a sweater, not a suit. this is worth noting, as are all other small details i observe.

she just wants to put her dressing on her salad, lmaoooo, she does not give a fuck. so he throws in “and i’m not wearing any pants right now” which gets NO response, bahaha! she's got things on her mind!!! other than crop circles!!!

she seems upset.

OH SHE WROTE AND DIRECTED THIS??? PURRRRRRRR! i knew about the writing, but not about the directing.

STAB that salad while he rambles about crop circles. 

she claims she is listening. he wants to go to england TONIGHT, where more crop circles will appear as the computer program predicted, and he bought two tickets. she doesn’t CARE!! she wants to take a BATH, and she has PAPERWORK, and this has NOTHING to do with the FBI.

he is so taken aback. he says he’ll cancel her ticket.

that was harsh of her, BUT i’m not saying i wouldn’t do the same. he just ASSUMED she would want to go. and on a saturday!!! absolutely not!

(very interesting to once again see mulder barreling ahead in ahab-mode without consulting her opinion, assuming she will fall in line. oh, girl. there is so much to unpack there. it seems to me like a mixture of his self-centered devotion to the project and him being unable to invite her more formally into his life so he keeps relying on work as a crutch to bring them together)

“look, we’re always running. we’re always chasing the next big thing. why don’t you ever just stay still?” “i wouldn’t know what i’d be missing” 

GOD. allow me to rip my clothing in grief real quick. it's not like SHE knows what she would be missing either- she just thinks it is something she needs. she wants to drink wine with him and chat.

he leaves. she goes to the hospital. goes to pick up a folder. time slows down. 

she opens the folder and it’s…. a scan of some sort. from d. waterston. not the margarita girl. she is taken aback. she wants the autopsy results. the nurse apologizes. 

scully asks if the person on the x ray was dr. daniel waterston. and the nurse says yes. she is concerned. and walks to the room. where a doctor is saying there is nothing to worry about to a woman in there. scully sneaks around… and she goes in. 

pulls back the curtain with glassy eyes. approaches slowly. a man is on a breathing tube. a single tear rolls down his face. 

the doctor returns, and asks her to step in the hallway. he introduces himself to her- did she say her name was scully? dr. waterston’s mentioned you, he says. “i’m sorry, you must be mistaken” “no, you were a student of his, right?” she changes the subject 

(author's note: and the fact that he MENTIONED her to his DOCTOR just further creeps me tf out!!!!!! i should have known at this point what i was getting into!! i mean, i thought it was weird at the time, but i didn't know how weird it would get!!)

his condition is serious, but treatable. scully says he is remarkable, and goes home before the doctor pressures her further to stick around.

back at her apartment, she has a mac! it's blue and boxy. and she gets a phone call. “you came to see him” “who is this?” “margaret waterston” “maggie. is everything all right?” <- is she his wife?? “well that depends, doesn’t it?” “i’m sorry?”

she referred to her as “maggie”, so clearly they know each other… “whatever”, maggie says

“dr. kopeikan told my father you were here, and now he wants to see you” ohhh, she’s his daughter!!! “look, it’s your choice, but if you come, that doesn’t mean i accept you being in his life” <- DAMN.

another call is coming through. maggie hangs up. it’s mulder, and a movie is playing at his house- did he put a TV in front of his bed? still adjusting to him having a bed, tbh.

he wants her to go pick up some photos of more alleged crop circles after he heads out for his flight. but more time is slowing down. she says she’s out for the evening. asks him to leave the address on the machine, and she’ll try for him.

she goes back to the hospital. lots of people are in this room, surrounding a patient. “i’m sorry, i have the wrong room”, she says. it’s okay, one of them replies kindly. she walks out. there is gentle music playing.

now she goes to the right room with dr. waterston inside. maggie storms out when scully approaches. she walks in, quietly, before saying hi. “so i have to lock eyes with the devil for you to grace me with your presence?” 

he seems so much older than her. OH, and he calls her "dana". i don’t like that. i mean, i know that is probably what he called her when they knew each other, but it feels so wrong to the audience.

she says he’s lucky he made that diagnosis. “luck has nothing to do with it, dana. it’s what doctors do every day. you may have forgotten that” <- OHHHH, so rude??? just genuinely nasty.

she says “daniel…” in a very warning tone. then asks why he happened to be in washington. she goes to sit and he grabs her hand. she looks uncomfortable. 

“how’s the FBI?” “is that why you wanted to see me? to remind me once again what a bad choice i made?” <- ohhh, there is some tension here. 

he kisses her hand and then places it on his cheek. “believe me, my motivation is far more selfish than that” <- i don’t like this…

she says he scares her. “i scare you…. because i represent that which is ingrained, not only in your mind but in your heart- that which you secretly long for” <- that seems… very presumptuous. but she’s avoiding eye contact like she’s guilty of what he describes.

he never accepted her reason for leaving, saying it was an excuse. “i can’t believe the FBI is a passion. not like medicine” <- NO ONE ASKED YOU?

she gets up, saying she’s sorry she came. but he rubs a hand on her face. she just wanted to make sure he was okay. he says he knows how difficult it was to walk through that door- but she did, and that says something. which further sets off my creep alarm.

she leaves, perhaps thoroughly uncomfortable like i am. when her phone rings. it’s mulder. he has an address for the american taoist healing center to go and pick up the photos he mentioned earlier. “and she researches crop circles?” <- lmao

OH, it’s taoist, not buddhist! well, there can be overlap in these practices.

(the themes of the episode were, in fact, vaguely both❤️you could probably write a whole piece on this episode and the idea of surrendering to the dao, but that's a job for another day)

and then she nearly hits someone as a pedestrian walks right in front of her car. time slows once more as she presses on the brakes. the woman turns and smiles at her. scully is so confused.

what does sidewalk woman know…..?

mulder is calling out to see if she is still there. 

she pulls in at a big house and rings the doorbell. it was a woman who was at the hospital earlier that day! must be from the wrong room she walked into. they remember each other. scully says she is here on behalf of her partner to pick up some photos. her name is colleen azar, and she asks scully if she would like to come in.

scully says no- she needs some fresh air, which prompts colleen to worry. scully claims she's shaken from a near car accident. been there, sister.

but colleen says it isn't nothing- car accidents come from us not paying attention to something. scully wants to get out of there, saying she doesn’t have much time. 

“you think what we do is a little ridiculous, don’t you?” “uh, to be honest, i don’t know exactly what it is that you do” “but you’ve already formed a judgement about it” <- ohhhh… she clocked her tea immediately

“i really should be going”

“there is a greater intelligence in all things”, says colleen without looking up from her papers. “accidents- or near accidents- often remind us that we need to keep our mind open to the lesson it gives”

scully licks her lips. colleen hands her the paper and says to slow down. then shuts the door on her.

scully drops all of the papers, and time slows as she picks them up, including a crop circle of the heart chakra. then her phone rings again.

she’s back at the hospital with daniel. “ah, hurricane scully has arrived” “i was summoned” <- what does he want with her?! he wants someone to back up his treatment theory, because the doctor won't listen to him

scully points out that prednisone won’t complicate cardiac arrhythmia, not if it’s just a short burst, which waterston says “there” to, as if it proves his point. the doctor leaves.

maggie is furious. “you come off so rational, but maybe you know less than you think” ohhh… is this a “you’re not my REAL mom” sort of situation? she storms out. waterston says she’s been through some difficult times. scully asks how she found out. waterston says he did things he wasn’t proud of.

“things got bad at home after…” “bad how?” “i haven’t been completely honest with you. it was hard for me… when you walked away. shut down from my family. and needless to say, it was very difficult for barbara” "you divorced”

SCULLY WAS WITH A MARRIED MAN?!! WHAAAAT.

“only after an interminable period of discomfort for us both” “where did you go?” “here. washington” “almost ten years ago” “daniel… you didn’t move here for me?” “i didn’t mean for it to happen this way, of course” she's crying. “oh, god. you’ve come at such a strange time” “i know. you have a life” “i don’t know what i have”, she laughs

she points out that she would have never known he was here if it wasn’t for a mix up in the folder she came to retrieve

“i want everything i should want at this time of my life. maybe i want the life i didn’t choose” <- oh... ouch...

he reaches out to her… she presses his hand against hers. and they grasp each other. she cries against him, his fingers running through her hair. when his monitor starts to go off. he's flat-lining. she’s doing compressions. yelling for a nurse.

woah. that is major tea. scully was with a MARRIED PROFESSOR???? gag.

the nurse rushes in while she’s doing doctory stuff, shocking his chest- where is his doctor in this hospital?! i mean, i trust her to get the job done, but she’s off the clock! she’s freaking tf out. they get a pulse going. and she’s panicking. 

she goes back to the house from before- colleen's taoist place. someone else answers the door and asks if she wants to come in. scully says no, but this stranger only opens the door wider so she basically has to, lmao. she’s walking around. looking at the various contraptions. 

oh! colleen and this other lady smooch! okay! now that i see her in the light, i realize that colleen is very, very pretty.

scully says she’s very sorry for being rude the other day, and she doesn’t know what colleen does. she wanted to ask her about something she said. they sit down together.

she starts to open up, saying her friend is ill, and she thinks he may be dying of a more serious condition than anyone realizes. "friend"- interesting word choice there. colleen starts to explain layers of energy, consciousness, and aura. if you witness this, truths come out little to do with science and much to do with faith.

“what are you saying that i saw?” “pain. and where there’s pain, there’s a need for healing- physically, mentally, or spiritually” 

colleen says shame, guilt, and fear create imbalance, and it makes you forget who you are. she rests a hand on her knee and asks if she would like tea. i wonder what shame, guilt, and fear scully is holding onto. being with this man?

scully is fidgeting with one of her many gadgets when colleen asks if she has ever had moments when everything seems clear- when time seems to expand. scully says yes. “you may be more open to things than you think- it’s just a matter of what you do with it” <- well, that is an assessment on scully's character i would agree with.

they sip tea. colleen used to be a doctor. she thought she was happy, but she was cut off from the world and from herself, dying inside

OH. OUCH…. the scully parallels...

she was hiding her relationship with the woman scully saw earlier, then she was diagnosed with cancer, which got her attention. made her realize the field had no meaning for her, so she left it, and it helped her be happy. only when he she saw a healer who helped her release shame did her cancer go into remission.

everything happens for a reason, colleen says. 

wow. that is heavy. also love that gillian had the pen for one episode and said "this show needs some lesbians". and she was absolutely correct.

scully goes back to see daniel with some tulips, but maggie asks if she’s happy. “you can’t. he’s in a coma” “since when?” “since about two minutes after you supposedly saved his life” <- OHHHHH MY GOD? is she implying malpractice?

maggie blocks her from entering. “do you have any idea the hell you’ve created in our lives?” “maggie, to be honest, i left so that there wouldn’t be hell in your lives” “don’t try to be reasonable with me. i am so sick of being reasonable. you moved on, but we’ve had to live with what you left behind”

so maggie is mad at her for leaving her dad- even though he was cheating on her mom to be with her?? and she thinks her leaving broke him?? or is it more of a "this is all your fault for even getting with him in the first place", although, let's be clear, maggie does not seem that much younger than scully, she has to realize how creepy the whole thing is... maybe she blames her for "awakening" that part of her father, so to speak...

(author's note: this scene makes so much more sense in the original version of the episode we didn't get to see, which is a shame, because based on what was explained to me in that other post i mentioned, the original version sounded a lot more compelling, especially through the lens of scully grappling with her shame and guilt. oh well. what can you do?)

she looks so sad. more moby is playing as she leaves. damn. moby really was the soundtrack of the time, huh? i've lived my whole life moby-less until now.

she’s walking away slowly, flowers in hand. walking past a temple. incense or smoke or something blows by her. it’s an apothecary. she wanders into the woman from before who she almost hit!! she's running after her. following her into a building. 

inside there are lots of plants. and then a door. is this a temple? she pushes the door open. finds cushions and candles and a statue of the buddha. it is very beautiful.

she falls to her knees. closes her eyes. breathing in, rocking back and forth. flashbacks of her life play- her father, her mother, her sister. then, waterston laying down. his heart pumping. his lips moving- his eyes opening. she gasps and opens her eyes, which are filled with tears. the buddha stature stares down at her. 

did she…. manifest that? is he better now?

back at the hospital, someone is trying to clear blocked chakras from waterston. his doctor enters- “dr. scully, who do you think you are?” (um, how about she's the woman that did CPR on him while you were doing god knows what? don't blame his coma on her, where tf were you?)

she's with colleen. they’re doing an alternative approach to healing. the doctor tells her she is wasting her time- but she just wants to help. she says it so quietly and honestly. it seems like nothing else was working. “with all due respect, that is not for you to assess”, he says- it is for his medical team and his family.

maggie tells her to continue- if it isn’t hurting him, we should be open to it, she explains. the chakra man says there is nothing more to do- he is ready to move on, but he needs to do something before he does so. scully turns to maggie. more moby plays.

she goes home, getting in a bathrobe. then, she’s in a suit. sees herself in the hospital bed, dying. and is awoken by a phone call.

it’s maggie. she wants her to come to the hospital right away and immediate hangs up before she can ask any questions.

waterston is awake, asking if she thought he would give up so easy. she approaches him. tells him he was slipping away. he makes a snide comment about her “voodoo ritual”, but he doesn’t want to talk about that. they need to talk about what happens next for us. what does he mean by "for us"?

scully spoke at length with maggie. “it’s time… you took responsibility for the hurt you caused in your family”. she says it’s no accident he got sick.

“dana… it was only to be with you. you are all i live for” “maybe the reason you’re alive right now is to make up for that”

she says she’s not the same person, and she wouldn’t have known that if she hadn’t seen him again. 

maggie was listening to all of this. and scully leaves before she enters the room. 

god. what a graceful response from scully. i would have probably told him to choke and enjoy hell. but she does something to save his life, he's nasty, and then expects that after 10 years, they will somehow find a way to be together. her saying that he needs to make up for only living for her is such a careful word choice.

scully is standing outside of the hospital with her arms crossed. time is slow. she sees the woman she nearly hit again. and runs after her. but it’s mulder? he says he was looking for her. 

so that woman was some sort of divine apparition, maybe...

he says nothing happened in england- no crop circles. “maybe sometimes nothing happens for a reason, mulder” “come on, i’ll make you some tea” oh. my heart. it's melting again.

“i just find it hard to believe” “what part?” “the part where i go away for two days and your whole life changes” 

their feet are up on his table, the light from his fish tank shining on their faces

“mm, i didn’t say my whole life changed” “you speaking to god in a buddhist temple. god speaking back” “mm, and i didn’t say god spoke back. i said that i had some kind of a vision”

this is so open and vulnerable and unlike them. she must have told him everything about waterston.

she goes quiet. “what is it?”, he asks. and again, oh my god, it's so gentle.

“i once considered spending my whole life with this man. what i would have missed.” oh man... her saying this as she sits next to him on the couch.. hold on, hold on....

“i don’t think you can know. i mean, how many different lives would we be leading if we made different choices. we… we don’t know”

“what if there was only one choice… and all the other ones were wrong? and there were signs along the way to pay attention to?” man... hold on, hold on...

“mm. and all the… choices would then lead to this very moment. one wrong turn, and we wouldn’t be sitting here together" he's serious, but then he's almost laughing: "well, that says a lot. says a lot, a lot, a lot. i mean, that's probably more than we should be getting into at this late hour”

but when he turns to see what her reaction is, she's asleep on his shoulder. he brushes her hair back. wraps her up in a blanket. and gets up. we pan over the fish tank and see a little UFO toy in there. and is that a tiny buddha on his shelf?

wait. i have to rewatch that scene or i might die.

she just falls asleep, LMFAOOO. oh, poor sleepy thing, so tired from going through all of that over the past 2 days, and so prone to falling asleep easily even on the best of days. OHHH, and his smile falls when he realizes that. he just... looks at her. so lovingly.

SO WAIT. did she fall asleep on his couch and they didn’t actually hook up?! i have to go watch the beginning again, sorry, LMAOOOO

well, no. she is putting on her clothes in the beginning. and she fell asleep wearing them. so she definitely took them off. she’s watching him in his bed. 

so yes. hook up CONFIRMED.

which is something i thought i saw about this episode, but i wasn’t 100% sure, LMAOOO

okay. i don’t know what to think!!

crazy scully lore reveal!!!! so, it seems that she was dating her professor, who was quite frankly obsessed with her. at first, i thought it was a consensual thing- hence my shock that scully knew he had a wife- but like… him moving to DC ten years earlier??? saying that she was all he loved? and also, can you ethically date someone who controls if you pass or fail a class?? that just seems… super fucking predatory.

okay, i made an entirely separate post to address that point which i linked to at the very top, because if i didn’t, i would probably spend the whole rest of this analysis on it. and we have plenty to cover. but i agree with other's assessment that she probably thought it was an equal relationship at the time- she was young, but not that young, thinking she was ready for something as serious as an affair, not seeing that he was holding all the cards in his hand... yeah. a lot to be said there about the power dynamics and scully trying to prove herself by diving into a relationship with a much older, more established man. and he probably did that to a ton of students, too- made them feel special and mature. gosh. it is really very icky. like i said, her telling him to own up to his mistakes was a very measured response.

also, it is still a shitty thing to do to have an affair, don't get me wrong. i'm not trying to make scully seem innocent, but it is clear she was being manipulated and this wasn't an evenly balanced power dynamic- this was pretty damn predatory. since that is the direction they went with- her willingly dating a man who was married instead of her breaking it off when he learned he was- i feel that could have been more fleshed out. it makes far more sense in the original context. time constraints, sure, but still. the whole plot with maggie would have made a lot more sense had they gone in the original direction.

so. other than that.

GOD. scully driving back to colleen’s place because she wanted to apologize for being rude and because something she said was sticking with her... she is just so kind. and honest. and curious.

and opening up to a stranger because she was so desperate for answers, but also because they had this connection that she initially didn't want to pursue, preferring to stay in her old ways… sharing tea, admitting her biases, listening to her story. spinning her gadget in the kitchen. colleen coming out to her and to the world. god.

and regardless of how you want to characterize the exact nature of what was going on between her and waterston, he was creepy and rude and nasty to her, and it was hard for her to be around him, but she told him he needs to admit to the pain he caused his family. GOD. standing up to him like that… fuck. that’s just SUCH an enormous thing, and you could tell it dominated such a large part of her youth and her outlook on her life since. how she really thought that she made the wrong choice at first, how she rested her head on his chest, and how she realized no- i like the life i've built, i can't live in the past wondering what could have been when i have the here and now, and what a gift it is.

and she had a long talk with maggie… even though maggie was so furious with her and even blamed scully for him falling into a coma on top of breaking apart their family… she talked with her and they agreed that he did things wrong and he needed to apologize. 

scully is so kind.

she let mulder have it at the beginning of the episode, but if it was saturday and my partner bought me tickets to england without consulting me, i can’t say i would behave any better. and she has kept voicing her dissatisfaction, but he doesn’t know how to respond, so he simply dodges it. for years now this has been happening! of course nothing would get better between the conversation in the car in dreamland and that moment! 

but even if she snapped at him and even if he deserved it, and even if he drives her crazy so often, she found him in the form of a messenger. some divine intervention. how many other times has he been placed in her life by some sort of angel?

and then she told him everything, and he listened and he joked and she got more and more open, until she fell asleep and he tucked her in. so carefully. the way he was looking at her… god.

and then… they hooked up. i'm curious as to how that went. she falls asleep on his couch, and either wakes him up, or he was still awake, and then what? do they talk more? does she cut straight to the chase? was there a conversation beforehand about what it would mean for them moving forward, and what they mean to each other, and why do this now- because she realized what she had in front of her and it couldn't wait any longer? is this finally going to be the "staying still" she has wished for- just acknowledging how they feel rather than barreling ahead so they don't have to talk about it?

does that mean they’re canon and together for real? does that mean they’ll actually start, you know, acknowledging their feelings for each other? because lord knows that they haven’t been able to do that until now. will they have to hide it from all of their coworkers and skinner? is there going to be an awkward phase of feeling what this “thing” is out? going on a first real date? trying to call each other “honey” and laughing at how strange it sounds?

or is it “just” sex for now? would that be any better than the circle they have already been elaborately dancing in for the last 7 years? or will it make things MORE complicated? or is this a one time moment of weakness/clarity thing going on? what is it going to be like the next time they see each other?

so much to play with here.

but all of this ignores the real heart of the episode, which is scully opening herself up to the spiritual. we have seen her dives into catholicism before- she was, at some point, almost attending mass regularly- but she was open to change. to any sort of answers. the visual of her sitting before the buddha with her cross necklace on was super powerful. actually trying a chakra healing cleanse on waterston because colleen said it might help. the idea of the divine coming in many forms- how interesting to consider that through scully's eyes.

listening and learning to colleen and the universe out of a genuine curiosity- and some desperation thrown in there too, because doing things as she has done them hasn’t been working. exploring the non-scientific. looking into new belief systems. feeling rather than rationalizing. accepting the guilt and the pain and the shame of what she did and what could have been and working through it. having a vision. and all of those things are so incredibly personal, but she chooses to tell mulder about them despite knowing his reaction would be incredulous. and he is shocked, but he treats her gently. he can read between the lines.

and all of this happening because of a series of coincidences- the wrong folder, the near accident, dropping the papers. wisdom in all things. fuck.

god. it is just brilliant. there’s a lot i still have to sit with and parse out, and i’m in no rush to do it, because i have plenty of time to analyze. but it was really great. i am so happy for scully. i hope that things go well for them from now on, but i’m no fool. 

did moby have a stake in this episode? i gotta say, i had never heard a moby song before this show. all i know about him is that he’s bald, vegan, and claimed to date natalie portman and she was like, wtf is he talking about, that never happened. but now i have been given many moby songs in this show. i don’t really care for them, but i understand.

so, once again i am convinced that the actors of this show understand their characters far more than any of the writers do, and we should let them cook more often. alas! this happened 25 years ago and i wasn't there to stand outside the studio with signs and voice my opinions.

please tell me all of your thoughts on this episode. if this isn't the longest writeup i've ever made, it is very close. did you like it? what did you think about her ventures into the spiritual? i know it won't happen again, but i would love to see more of colleen. how do you think the getting together part went? please do share. and if you have fic of what happened next, that would be swell, too.

[atreeinthemoonlight]

I like having conversations with you! Honestly, personally, I don't think book(not show or fanon) Lyanna would have accepted her life as a queen, I don't see her as someone ambitious, a Cersei reborn(Show Lyanna is another story) ladylike.

Even Ned tells Robert that he didn't see the iron in her, just an idea.

She strikes me as someone who wants freedom, a tomboy with dreams to be more, to be free of her shackles; she reminds me of Arya, even Ned compared them(and Arya thought he was wrong because aunt Lyanna was "beautiful" :( ).

Lyanna wasn't ladylike and wasn't happy to hear her future husband was a womanizer.

Do you expect me to believe she would have been happy playing mistress with a married man with two kids?

Or queen? I'm sorry? Ruler of a divided country? Do you expect me Dorne to be silent, to bow under the family that has failed to protect Elia Martell and her children?

Those dudes had the guts to tell Rhaenys the Conqueror "fuck you,we don't bend you to you, incest ghouls" and managed to kill a dragon, remaining independent and unbothered until you touched their family.

Going back to Book Lyanna XD:

I believe she went willingly with R because she wanted to be free, and who could help her if not the future king? Or maybe she fell for him and ran away to be with him(Conflicts of the Heart are a specialty of George), but when she heard about her family's murder, she was like: "No. I want to go home." That was her wake-up call.

Or maybe... maybe she didn't go willingly: Rhaegar threatened her to go with him if she didn't want her identity as a knight of laughing tree being revealed.

She wanted to be free but ended up trapped in a tower and died.

It's pretty tragic.

In the books, all we really get is Lyanna saying she knew Robert would never be faithful—nothing more. Even when she gets the crown of love and beauty, her reaction isn’t described—it’s other characters who embellish the moment.Martin has confirmed that Jon Snow’s mother is Lyanna—but he’s kept the identity of the father deliberately vague, supposedly to preserve some mystery. And yet in fan theories, the most widespread take is still R+L=J.

Whether she wanted to be queen—anyway, what the fans really want is for Rhaegar to have won—so Lyanna could become his wife and queen, one way or another. Some fans like to say, “She didn’t care about that stuff, she's not that kind of woman.But Rhaegar just happened to be the crown prince, so naturally his wife just happened to be the queen.”To put it simply: she’s too proud to care about being queen—yet she still has to be one. How should I put it—let’s just hope her days as queen in the Red Keep truly suited her nature. 😅

Dorne?Oh just a remote region, no need to mention it.The show took it even further—they just have written Dorne off like it was hit by a tsunami or swallowed up by an earthquake—just gone, like it never existed. And from what I heard about the leaked ending, I don’t know if it’s true,correct me if I'm wrong—Jon and Daenerys supposedly have a daughter named Lyanna.Excuse me?It’s not that the audience or readers don’t care about Dorne—it’s the writers, the voices with influence, the ones shaping the narrative, who systematically choose not to care about Dorne.

As for her ending—she died in childbirth, isolated and surrounded by secrecy, remembered mostly through the stories others told about her,far from home, with no family by her side—that’s tragic, no matter the context.